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BEECHER 

as a Humorist 

SELECTIONS FROM THE PUBLISHED WORKS 

OF 

HENRY WARD BEECHER 

COMPILED BY 

ELEANOR KIRK 

EDITOR OF " THE BEECHER BOOK OF DAYS," " BEECHER 
CALENDAR," ETC. 




NEW YORK 
FORDS, HOWARD, AND HULBERT 

1887 



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Copyright, 1887, 
By fords, HOWARD, AND HULBERT. 



•RAND AVERY COMPANY, 

ELECTROTYPERS AND PRINTERS, 

BOSTON. 



PREFACE. 



This volume was practically completed just before 
the spirit which animates it, and which had brought 
uplift and comfort and knowledge and wholesome 
mirth to so many hearts, had been called home. 

Then, for a time, the thought of giving to the 
world these laughter-provoking extracts seemed 
almost like a sacrilege. But soon a more healthful 
feeling prevailed. Why should the song cease be- 
cause the singer was gone ? Why should the help 
that comes from laughter be ended because the 
mu'th-making spirit had departed ? 

Nothing, certainl}', could be more out of har- 
mony with the teachings of the author than that. 
And so, like the flowers which, at his request, took 
the place of the usual trappings of woe, and caused 
every passer-by to think of new happiness in im- 
mortal gardens, this volume of laughter is sent 
abroad with the full faith that the great orator 
and teacher — the most spontaneous humorist that 
America has ever known — would, if he could 
speak to us, bid it God-speed. 

ELEANOR KIRK. 

Bbookltn, Juue, 18S7. 

iii' 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 



While Mr. Beecher's friends knew him as sun- 
shiny, genial, mirthful, the humor in his public min- 
istrations, whether secular or religious, was never 
fun for the sake of awakening " fool's laughter," 

— that easily kindled " crackling of thorns under a 
pot," — but was simply a part of himself, used as 
he believed the preacher should use every thing he 
could bring to bear in " catching men." He never, 
as he himself said, went out of his way to make a 
joke, or to avoid one ; when a thing presented itself 
to him in a ludicrous light he was likely to flash it 
at those whom he was addressing. 

The longer extracts, toward the close of this vol- 
ume, are more purely humorous, — the free play 
of his mirth, for its own enjoyment. The brief 
extracts are mostly taken from his spoken words, 

— sermons, lectures, etc., — and in each case the 
source is given, that the reader may have some 
hint of the general current of thought, from the 
surface of which these glancing ripples and bubbles 
have been caught. 

V 



"BEECHER ON CMIRTHFULNESS. 



A MAN who is himself full of benevolence, going 
out and walking through the day, comes back at 
night, and marvels that there is so much gold 
streaked through the rock of human life. He finds 
what he carries. He is susceptible to that which is 
strong in himself. 

A man who is mirthful will walk by Mr. Soberside, 
who never saw a humorous thing, and tvho toonders 
that his companion is perpetually cachinnating. Tlie 
sober man feels and sees nothing of it, but the 
mirthful man is sensitive to every thing grotesque in 
nature or among men. Children seem whimsiccd ; 
actions look ludicrous ; men's speeches tivine them- 
selves into odd combinations ; the mistakes that men 
commit, and the thousand suggestions and analogies, 
the likenesses and the contrasts, which are presented 
to the mind, take on attitudes corresponding to the 
feeling that is observing them, or show themselves in 

its light. 

Vli 



Vlll BEECHER ON MIRTHFULNESS. 

Life is full of amusement to an amusing man. 
Happy is he ivho Jias this faculty. It is more blessed 
than a garment in cold iveather. There is nothing 
that so covers the nerves^ there is nothing that so 
tempers anger and passion, there is nothing that is 
such a natural cure for discontent, there is nothing 
that brings men to such a companionable level, and 
creates such fellowship^ as the divine spirit of 
mirth. 

It is despised in the sanctuary, and nearly cast 
out ; though oftentimes it is of God, and leads us 
back to God, if it is not perverted. — Sermon : 
Malign Spiritual Influences. 



BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 



Some people are so dry that you might soak them in 
a joke for a month, and it would not get through their 
skin. — Seumon : Christian Sympathy. 



How grateful ought we to be that God sends along, 
here and there, a natural heart-singer, — a man whose 
nature is large and luminous, and who, by his very car- 
riage and spontaneous actions, calms, cheers, and helps 
his fellows ! God bless the good-natured, for they bless 
everybody else ! — Eyes and Ears. 



]\Ien will let you well-nigh scale them and skin them, 
if you will only make them laugh. There are many 
men who will not go into the Kingdom if you approach 
them soberly, but are quite willing if you weave a 
sunbeam-cord of mirth to draw them in by. — Sermon : 
Peaceableness. 

1 



2 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

"What are you laughing at now? You are as full 
of levity as flies are. Would you laugh if you was 
dying ? I really believe you would I To think of it I 
A deacon, at your time of life, chirpin' as if you was 
a cricket — and goin' round, as if you was nothin' bet- 
ter'n a bird, siugin' and hoppin', instead of beiu' a 
deacon, with an immortal soul in him ! Sometimes I 
am afeerd you are in the gall of bitterness yet. You 
ought to examine your evidences, Deacon Marble." — 
Norwood : Mrs. Polly Marble. 



This world would be a great groaning machine if 
God had not sent humor to make its wheels run smooth, 
and sparkling wit by which to light a torch that should 
guide a thousand weary feet in right ways. — Sermon : 
Keeping the Faith. 

I REJOICE in the provision that is made for more 
leisure, more vacation, more laughter, and less crying. 
These rub out the wrinkles. They widen the brain. 
They make the heart pulsate with better blood. Relaxa- 
tion is a good thing. — Sermon : Brain-Life in America. 



Don't be harsh in judgment. I am of the opinion of 
Baxter, who said that the grace of God could live with 
persons that he could not. — Sermon : Choosiiig a Wife. 



SOBRIETY. — D YSPEPSIA. — DANCING. 3 

If a man was made sober, we ought not to reproach 
him for being so. If a man cannot laugh, he is no more 
to blame than his purse is, because that cannot laugh. — 
Sermon : They have their Reward. 



I NEVER saw a man who was large enough to report 
the whole truth in respect to any thing which he looked 
at. It has not been considered safe, I think, in heaven, 
where the manufactory of men is, to put every thing in 
every body. The result is, that one man carries so much, 
and another so much. Why, it takes about twenty men 
to make one sound man. — Sermon : Christian Sympathy. 



If you want to get the dyspepsia, follow down every 
mouthful, to know what it is doing. You wiU very 
speedily find out. — Sermon : Man-Building. 



The man that has lived for himself has the privilege 
of being his own mourner. — Sermon : Generosity and 
Liberality. 

And do not even the deacons now look more blandly 
upon dancing? When I was a boy, if I had done such a 
thing, my father would have fiddled with a different bow. 
— Sermon: Brain-Life in America. 



4 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. 

God did not call you to be canary-birds in a little cage, 
and to hop up and down on three sticks, within a space 
no larger than the size of the cage. God calls you to be 
eagles, and to fly from sun to sun, over continents. — 
Sermon : The Perfect Manhood. 



There have been men who thought to make them- 
selves more devout by spending days in sepulchres. If 
worms are men's best priests, then that is the best place 
for a man to go to church. — Sermon : Thoughts of 
Death. 

If you send a villain to Albany or Washington to 
represent you, he does represent you ! — Sermon : Abhor- 
rence of Evil. 

Q. How long would you advise a young man to preach ? 

Mr. Beecher, As long as he can make his people 
take his sermon. That is very much like asking how 
long a coat you should have made for people, in general. 
Yale Lectures on Preaching. 



" Working for men who are not among the ' elect,' is 
like sewing without any thi-ead in your needle, — a good 
deal of work, and nothing to show for it." — Norwood: 
Agate Bissell. 



COMMENTARIES. — HUMOR IN THE PULPIT. 5 

A Christian is the best commentary on the New 
Testament. But there are not enough such commenta- 
ries to send out. The edition is small. — Sermon : The 
Vital Principle. 

If a child would play nmmblety-peg, I would not advise 
him to go into the graveyard, and play on his father's and 
mother's graves. There are proprieties and adaptions : 
and if a man is called merely to please, if he is to be a 
mere pleasure-monger, even of ideas, let him take the 
lecture-room or the theater; let him go where pleasure is 
the normal end. — Sermon : The Right and the Wrong 
Way of Giving Pleasure. 



In preaching, never turn aside from a laugh any more 
than you would from a cry. ... If mirth comes up nat- 
urally, do not stifle it ; strike that chord, and particularly 
if you want to make an audience weep. If I make them 
laugh, I do not thank anybody for the next move : I will 
make them cry. Did you ever see a woman carrying a 
pan of milk quite full, and it slops over on one side 
that it did not immediately slop over on the other also? 
— Yole Lectures on Preaching. 



" A MAN that won't fight when his flag's fired on, ain't 
worth a dead nit." — Norwood : Hiram Beers. 



6 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

Next, Hiram's prying eyes saw Mr. Turfraould, the 
sexton and undertaker, who seemed to be in a pensive 
meditation upon all the dead that he had ever buried. 
He looked upon men in a mild and pitying manner, as if 
he forgave them for being in good health. You could 
not help feeling that he gazed upon you with a profes- 
sional eye and saw just how you would look in the con- 
dition which was to him the most interesting period of a 
man's earthly state. He walked with a soft tread, as if 
he was always at a funeral; and, when be shook your 
hand, his left hand half followed his right, as if he were 
about beginning to lay you out. — Norwood. 



I REMEMBER when I was first asked to lead in prayer. 
If all the air between heaven and me had been put under 
the piston of a condenser, and crowded right down on my 
head, I should not have felt more as though I was suffo- 
cating! I gasped literally, and said, "No, sir." I felt 
crushed out of life. I was perfectly paralyzed. — Lecture- 
room Talks. 

What would you think of a man who should attempt 
to study botany by eating rotten chestnuts ? What if a 
man should eat decayed apples, and then pass judgment 
on fruity But men go thi-ough the Old Testament, and 
pick out the scandalous scenes, and say, "Here's a 
sample of your Bible." — Sermon: Conceptions of God. 



SPEAKING. — FALSE HUMILITY. — HYPOCRISY. 7 

Some are gifted in oratory: while others are like 
pumps without a nozzle ; the well is deep, and there is 
plenty of water, but there is no way to get it out. It is 
a mere question of variety in gifts. — Sermon: Cou' 
science. 



You shall see the men who through the day walk with 
their face radiant, their eye full of life, their gestures 
quick ; who address themselves in a versatile way to their 
business; who are successful in their affairs; who are 
lively and genial in their social intercourse, so that every- 
body likes them; and who, when they go to their reli- 
gious meetings in the evenings, are dull of eye, stupid of 
tongue, and proper of body, every thing having gone to 
sleep in them, because religion is such an " awful " thing. 
And that is what they call an offering to God ! — Sermon : 
Religious Fervor. 

It is no compliment to divine grace for a man who has 
been forty years in the church to get up, and say, " I feel 
as though I was a vile and filthy rag." He is a vile and 
filthy rag to say that. — Sermon : The Peace of God. 



When a man is alive, how little do you suspect that he 
is what he is when you see him in the Sunday-school 
library ! — Sermon : Unprofitable Servants. 



8 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

Many people are concerned because their children are 
sweet, loving, and compliant, so that they cannot get an 
awful religious experience out of them. It is as if the 
bass-viol should mourn because it cannot do what the 
flute does. — Sermon : As a Little Child. 



In some houses, family discipline, domestic life, and 
the whole end of living, seem to be to avoid dirt, and 
secure neatness. Is there any thing so tormenting as 
ecstatic neatness? Oh for a morsel of dirt, as a luxury I 
How good dust looks! A ploughed field with endless 
dirt, — all hail! The great sentence itself, which con- 
signs man finally to dust again, becomes a consolation. — 
Eyes and Ears. 

Two good men are neighbors, but they hardly speak 
to each other. They live in adjoining houses, and meet 
each other every day ; but they never recognize each 
other, and will hardly allow their children to play to- 
gether through the fence. This is because one man 
believes that he has been fore-ordained from all thne for 
glory, and the other — don't. — Sermon : Conscience. 



When did a child ever look ugly to its mother? And 
larks, doubtless, think their featherless, discolored, yel- 
low-mantled squabs more beautiful than full-grown hum- 
ming-birds. — Eyes and Ears. 



WUJPPING. — NA MES. — REPDTA TlON. 9 

And when my father used to say, " Henry, I do not 
want to do it," I used to say to myself, "What under 
heaven do you do it for, then ! " I did not want to be 
whipped ; and if he did not want to whip me, it seemed 
to me a very unnecessary ceremony. But when I became 
a father, I felt that nothing in the world was more true. 
How one feeling interprets another ! When I had 
children to bring up, they so far inherited my nature, 
that they deserved to be whipped often; and they got 
their deserts. — Sermon : The Sympathy of Christ. 



" Folks use their children as if they were garret-pegs, 
to hang old clothes on — first a jacket, then a coat, and 
then another jacket. You have to take them all down 
to find either one. Our children go trudging all their 
lives with their load of names, as if they were Jews 
returning with an assortment of old clothes. People use 
their children as registers to preserve the names of aunts 
and uncles, parents and grandparents, and so inscribe 
them with the names of the dead, as if tombstones were 
not enough." — Norwood : Uncle Eb. 



If it is a little harder to build up character than repu- 
tation, it is only so in the beginning. For mere repu- 
tation, like a poorly built house, will cost as much for 
patciiing and i-epairs, as would have made it thorough at 
first. — Eyes and Ears. 



10 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

What a pity it is that family discipline has to stop 
short at the point where it does I Many men would be 
helped by a good, sound, physical argument. Rubifica- 
tion would do them good. — Sermon : Counting the Cost. 



Abiong the ways which men employ to sustain their 
respectability, none is more common than an exhibition 
of their social connections. One whose cousin is a gov- 
ernor, whose uncle is a general, whose brother has been 
to Congress, cannot but stand well in society. Repu- 
tation is of the nature of a vine, and our reputable rela- 
tives are so much brush or trellis on which we rim up. — 
Eyes and Ears. 

Whatever you may think of the development theory 
behind, let me tell you that the development theory he- 
fore is worthy of a life's attention. — Evolution and 
Religion. 

God uses suffering as a whetstone, to make men sharp 
with. After you have made your knife sharp, your 
whetstone has served the purpose for which it was in- 
tended. But the ascetics seemed to think that, if the 
whetstone was good at all, it was good all the time; 
and so they kept whetting till they ground off not only 
the edge but the body of the blade. — Sermon : Bearing, 
but not Overborne. 



MARRIAGE. — DARWINISM. 11 

In this great -whirligig of a world, there is nothing 
stranger than the mating and mismating of men and 
•women. There is no question that is more insoluble, 
and more often asked, than this : " What on earth ever 
tempted that woman to marry that man?" You cannot 
answer it, I cannot, and she cannot. There is but one 
other question like it ; and that is, " What on earth ever 
tempted that man to marry such a woman ? " He can- 
not tell, and she cannot, and nobody can. So it is, and 
80 it will be, all the time, here, and there, and everywhere 
on earth. — Sermon : The Hidden Life. 



It has been supposed that we sprang from monkeys, 
and there has been an inquisition to see if there has not 
been a caudal appendage rubbed off. Nations have 
been explored to find a man who had a tail as a monkey 
has, or some traces of one. You are looking in the 
wrong place. Look inside, and you will find resem- 
blances to the monkey, the lion, the bear, and the hog, 
all of them. Human nature is full of the animal. — Sek- 
MON : War. 

I AM perfectly willing that it should be true, that, 
millions of years ago, my ancestors sprang from mon- 
keys. I would as lief spring from a monkey as from 
some men that I know of. — Sermon : Apostolic Christi- 
anity. 



12 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

Far be it from me to say any thing in favor of Mr. 
Darwin ! But he has read his Bible, evidently, and has 
taken many ideas from Paul ; for I find that Paul's theoiy 
of the natural man, and Mr. Darwin's theory of the 
animal man, are very near together ; and that the ■whole 
line of apostolic thought, in regard to the inner man and 
the outer man, has a strange resemblance to the thought 
which Mr. Darwin is feeling after. — Lectures on Preaching. 



We are obliged to say that it was a treacherous chair. 
The rockers had been curved to such lines, that, if you 
ventured beyond a very gentle motion, the chair would 
give a backward lurch, as if going over; and there are 
few things more unsatisfactoi-y to a sober-minded person, 
careful of appearances, than to be carried over backwards 
in the midst of a quiet conversation. It is true that the 
chair never did go over. The shape of the rocker was 
such that, when the victim had spread his arms and 
flirted his legs into the air, in an involuntary effort at 
equilibrium, the chair stopped and set itself firmly, as 
if it had been blocked, returning again to its normal 
state only upon a violent effort of its occupant. The 
neighbors were aware of this propensity, and avoided the 
chair. Strangers usually had an experience with it ; 
(lie good doctor, or his wife, for the hundredth time, re- 
assuring them, " Don't be alarmed. It won't go over. I 
never knew anybody to fall."' — Norwood: Dr. Buell's 
Library. 



BORES. — CREDITS. — ADAM. — REPENTANCE. 13 

Would it be manslaughter to kill a fool? Ought not 
the law to give a man some discretionary power over the 
life of these mosquitoes and gnats, that have, by some 
strange freak of nature, grown into the shape of men, 
without losing the propensities of insects ? — Eyes and 
Ears. 

We usually stretch the skirts of one good quality to 
cover the blank made by the absence of a dozen others. — 
Sermon : Unprofitable Servants. 



The human race was not created at the top in one 
man to fall to the bottom. Man began at the bottom, 
and, if there was any fall, it had to be upward. — Ser- 
mon : Adam and Christ. 



I have seen persons who have so exhausted themselves 
by religious emotions, that they had no strength left for 
religious duties. — Sermon : Conduct, the Index of Feeling. 



A BUNCH of needles put together is as blunt as a 
board ; but if you take each one out, and use it by itself, 
it is sharp, and pierces. If men are called to repentance 
in a bunch, they will be very apt to repent in a bunch, 
and their repentance will be very superficial. — Lectures 
on Preaching. 



14 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

People think that he is the Christian who lies back 
in his chair, and has glorious visions and experiences. 
" Oh ! such a good time, such a joyful time, as I have 
had ! " a man says. Well, let me see what he does a day 
or two afterward, and I can tell better whether it is a 
genuine Christian experience or not. — Sermon : Con- 
duct, the Index of Feelimj. 



A MAN IS not to be known by how much money he 
has, but by what that money is worth to him. You 
must put your hand into a man's heart to find out how 
much he is worth, not into his pocket. — Eyes and Ears. 



Men say that a priest should wear white; and then 
that he should wear black; and then that he should 
wear symbols of the cross ; and that he should face the 
east in certain things ; and that he should turn his back 
to the congregation in other things. A man has a per- 
fect right to turn his back to his congregation if he 
chooses. I think it is better, in the case of many a man, 
that he should turn his back entirely. — Sermon : The 
Nature of Liberty. 

A COMPLIMENT is praise crystallized. It bears about 
the relation to praise that proverbs do to formal phi- 
losophy, or that form does to poetry. — Eyes and Ears. 



INS P IRA TION. — CONSCIENCE. — POLITICS. 1 5 

I THINK there is a great deal more fighting for the 
Bible than there is of using it. There are a great many 
more persons anxious about the inspiration of the Bible, 
than there are about the spirit that is in it. — Sermon : 
The Mercifulness of the Bible. 



An intelligent conscience is one of the greatest of 
luxuries. It can hardly be called a necessity, or how 
would the world have got along as well as it has to this 
day ? — Sermon : Conscience. 



Have you a little chair of infallibility, upon which 
you can seat yourself at any time, and decide upon what 
is right or wrong, without possibility of error? — Ser- 
mon : Conscience. 



The great bulk of the people do not attend to publio 
affairs as heavenly helps. The politicians do. — Sermon : 
Brain- Life in America. 



Although all men should start with the democracy, all 
men have a right to stop with the aristocracy. Let all 
plant their feet on the same level, and then let them 
shoot as high as they please. Blessed is the man that 
knows how to overtop his neighbors by a fair development 
of skill and strength. — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. 



16 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. 

Public men are bees working in a glass hive; and 
curious spectators enjoy themselves in watching every 
secret movement, as if it were a study in natural history. 
— Eyes and Ears. 

A MAN undertakes to jump across a chasm that is ten 
feet wide, and jumps eight feet ; and a kind sympathizer 
says, "What is going to be done with the eight feet that 
he did jump? " Well, what is going to be done with it? 
It is one of those things which must be accomplished in 
whole, or it is not accomplished at all. — Seemon: The 
True Value of Morality. 



He is considered a blunderer nowadays who tells a 
lie. The artist will tell the truth so that it shall tell the 
lie. — Sermon: Trustworthiness. 



The idea that we sin because there is the remotest bit 
of yeast of that old man in us, may be just as well 
expunged. We do not need to borrow any thing of 
Adam. — Sermon : Adam and Christ. 



There is a temperate zone in the mind, between 
luxurious indolence and exacting work ; and it is to this 
region, just between laziness and labor, that summer 
reading belongs. — Eyes and Ears. 



HAYING. — OLD MATDS. — LIQUOR. 17 

It is brave work to see men pitching and loading hay. 
We lie down under the apple-trees, and exhort them all 
to diligence. We are surprised at any pauses to wipe 
the perspiration from their brows. We are very cool. 
We think haying a beautiful sport. We admire to see 
it going on from our window 1 We resist all overtui'es 
of the scythe and the fork, for we think one engaged in 
the midst of it less favorably situated to make calm and 
accurate observations. — Eyes and Ears. 



" I'd as lief tend flowers with a crowbar as to have one 
of them old maids about, with little babies. I wonder 
she don't take the little creetur in her work-bag, and 
walk off to prayer-meetin' with it ! You need to watch 
her, mother, or she'll bile down a catechism instead of 
mint or catnip, when the child has wind." — Norwood: 
Tommy Taft. 

The best fire in winter is made up of exercise, and the 
poorest of whiskey. He that keeps warm on liquor is like 
a man who pulls his house to pieces to feed the firei^lace. 
— Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. 



We have in our midst that exceedingly high mountain 
to which Satan took Christ, and showed him the smiling 
world beneath. It is the daily newspaper. — After-dinner 
Speech, Baptist Union. 



18 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

" I TELL you," said Hiram, turning slightly toward the 
doctor, " these horses are jest as near human as is good 
for 'em. A good horse has sense jest as much as a man 
has ; and he's proud, too, and he loves to be praised, and 
he knows when you treat him with respect. A good 
horse has the best pints of a man without his failin's." 

" What do you think becomes of horses, Hiram, when 
they die ? " said Rose. 

" Wal, Miss Rose, it's my opinion that there's use for 
horses hereafter, and that you'll find there's a horse- 
heaven. There's Scripture for that too." 

" Ah 1 " said Rose, a little surprised at these confident 
assertions. " What Scripture do you mean ? " 

"Why, in the Book of Revelation ! Don't it give an 
account of a white horse, and a red horse, and black 
horses, and gray horses? I've allers s'posed that when it 
said Death rode on a pale horse, it must have been gray, 
'cause it had mentioned white once already. In the 
ninth chapter, too, it says there was an army of two hun- 
di'ed thousand horsemen. Now, I should like to know 
where they got so many horses in heaven, if none of 'em 
that die off here go there ? It's my opinion that a good 
horse's a darned sight likelier to go to heaven than a bad 
man ! " — Norwood. 



It is hard for a strong-willed man to bow down to a 
weak-willed man. It is hard for an elephant to say his 
prayers to an ant. — Sermon : The Reward of Loving. 



THE CHURCH. — THE LORD'S DAY. 19 

The old idea of salvation was that, men were crackers 
all cut of a certain size, baked to a certain dryness, 
packed in church- boxes, and kept there. And when men 
were taken into church, they were like so many packages 
taken by an express company, and safely delivered at 
the other end of the i-oute. — Sermon : Other Men's 
Consciences. 



" Whose nag is that one, Hiram, — the roan ? " 

" That's Deacon Marble's." 

"Why, he seems to sweat standing still." 

Hiram's eye twinkled. 

"You needn't say nothin'. Doctor; but I thought it a 
pity so many horses shouldn't be doin' any thing! Of 
course, they don't know any thing about Sunday, — it 
ain't like workin' a creatur' that reads the Bible, — so 
I jest slipped over to Skiddy's widder — she ain't been 
out doors this two months, and I knew she ought to 
have the air — and I gave her about a mile! She was 
afraid 'twould be breakin' Sunday. ' Not a bit,' says I. 
' Didn't the Lord go out Sundays, and set folks off with 
their beds on their backs ? and didn't he pull oxen and 
sheep out of ditches, and do all that sort of thing?' 
If she'd knew that I took the Deacon's team, she'd been 
worse afraid. But I knew the Deacon would like it; and 
if Polly didn't, so much the better. I like to spite those 
folks that's too particular ! — There, Doctor, there's the 
last hymn." — Nokwood : A New-England Sunday. 



20 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

I HAVE never seen anybody that didn't make mistakes, 
except babies, and they always died early. — Sekmon : 
Mutual Judgments. 

The deacon has a weakness for preaching ; and as he 
cannot quite succeed, he puts a white cravat on, sleeks 
down his hair, and looks as if he would burst out into a 
sermon if you only touched him. We are prone to 
undervalue the things which we can do easily, and there- 
fore well, and to pride ourselves upon trifles, although we 
do them poorly, because men are surprised that we can 
do them at all. — Eyes and Ears. 



When I was a boy, nothing suited me so well as to 
have my father whip me when my clothes were on. 
Then I could bear it with the most equanimity. It was 
when he took me at advantage, in the morning, before I 
was dressed, that I did not like whipping. — Sekmon : 
The Conjlicts of Life. 



One or two extraordinary water-color pictures, exe- 
cuted by his wife, as the last consummate efforts of her 
expiring school-days, had been framed in black, .and now 
hung in the sitting-room. It always pleased Dr. Buell 
to have visitors notice them ; and his invariable comment 
was, " My wife's paintings ! — when she was younger and 
less occupied. I am told that they are remarkable." 
They certainly were, — Norwood : Dr. BueU's Library. 



LOVERS. — RELIGION. — POVERTY. 21 

We met a solitary man in the rain, between twelve 
and one at night. It seemed strange to see any thing 
human moving in the darkness and solitude of midnight. 
AVe hailed him, and inquired the way. Then we specu- 
lated what errand took him out. Not a thief, surely. 
" Perhaps he has been for a doctor," said the driver. 
" Or to watch with some sick neighbor," said I. "Or, 
maybe, a-courting," said the driver. "But," said I, "he 
was a middle-aged man, and not a young, spruce lover." 
— "No matter," says the driver: "it's about one thing 
with old or young when they go a-courting." — Star 
Papers : A Moist Letter. 



It may be that a man knows the catechism by heart (I 
have known men to survive it), and stand very high. — 
Sermon : The Golden Net. 



When Peter heard the cock crow, it was not the tail- 
feathers that crew. The crowing came from the inside 
of the cock. Religion is something more than the out- 
ward observances of the church. — Sermon: The Battle 
of Benecolence. 

We all say, " Blessed are the poor ; " and yet, if 
tliere be one blessing which we would prefer not to have 
more than another, it is that of poverty. — Sermon : 
Bearing One Another's Burdens. 



I'i BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

When I ridicule people, I want to do it in a good- 
natured way. That takes off the sting. But I cannot 
help laughing at Perfectionists. The idea of a perfect 
man or a perfect woman in this world is one of the 
sweetest jests that I ever roll under my tongue ! — Ser- 
mon: Contentment in All Tilings. 



What is the magnificent dome of St. Peter's but the 
highest development of that idea which you shall see 
expressed or hinted in every well-conditioned pumpkin. 
Thus, a few acanthus-leaves, touched by human genius, 
gave us the Corinthian capital. The arches of the forest, 
we are sometimes told, are the primitive types of Gothic 
architecture. Do not leaves, stems, roses, fleur-de-luces, 
sunflowers, clover-leaves, and scores of other things, 
furnish to architecture its richest decorations? But it 
was reserved to the pumpkin to crown the whole, by 
giving to architects the conception of a ribbed dome. 
Thus it is that modest merit often finds itself honored. — 
Eyes and Ears. 

There is very little hope of a fool ; and if a man who 
is conceited is worse off Lliaii that, he is badly off indeed. 
— Sekmon : Conceit. 



There is only one thing that J can think of that is not 
dangerous, and that is dying. — Sermon : The Inspiration 
of the Scripture. 



NAMING FLOWERS. — RELIGIOUS SENSE. 23 

Just as soon as we have got politics settled, business 
reformed, and human nature elevated, I am determined to 
form a society for the reformation of botanical names- 
Botany has been the Noah's Ark of pedants. One might 
as well hang a dictionary around a child's neck by way of 
ornament, as to impose on flowers such outrageous and 
outlandish names. — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. 



One of my boys conies in crying, and says, " Father, I 
ran against a lamp-post, and bruised my face." I say, 
"My son, do not run against lamp-posts." The next day 
he comes in with another bruise, and says, " I did not run 
against a lamp-post: I ran against a tree." — "Well," I 
say, " do not run against lamp-posts nor trees." The 
next day he comes in, having had another whack, and 
says, " I did not rue against a lamp-post nor a tree. I 
ran against an iron railing." 

He had obeyed me, and yet he was hurt. " "Well," you 
say, " the child who could not understand that, would be 
an idiot ; " — but you ought not to, because, in saying 
it, you sweep away half the theologians in creation. — 
Sekmon : 21ie Science of Rir/JU Living. 



There are many who measure what they are doing by 
what they can report. They go out with garrulity in 
the morning, and come back with statistics at night. — 
Sekmon : Patience. 



24 BEECIIER AS A IJUMOEIST. 

" Why, what did be go to Boston for ? " 

" Well, that's a pretty question ! That's the only place 
to go to I Why, if a man wants any thing, he alius goes to 
Boston. Every thing goes there, just as natural as if that 
city was the moon, and every thing else was water, and 
had to go, like the tides. Don't you know all the rail- 
roads go to Boston ? and sailors say — you ask Tommy 
Taft — if you start anywhere clear down in Floridy, and 
keep up along the coast, you will fetch up in Boston. 
They have to keep things tied up around there. They 
fasten their trees down, and have their fences hitched, 
or they would all of 'em whirl into Boston. They have 
watchers set every night, or so many things would come 
to admire Boston that tlie city would be covered down 
like Herculaneum. Of course the doctor went to Boston. 
Every single one of the first chop folks was married oif 
the week afore he got there, but one : there was just one 
left. But she was the very best of the lot. The doctor 
saw her in Old South Church. She was a-singin', ' Come, 
ye disconsolate.' The minute she set her eyes on the 
doctor — ! " — NoiiWOOD : Hiram Beers. 



Badgered, snubbed, and scolded on the one hand; 
petted, flattered, and indulged on the other, — it is aston- 
ishing liow many children work their way up to an honest 
manhood in spite of parents and friends. Human nature 
has an element of great toughness in it. — Eyes and Ears. 



HOW TO WRITE. — .MONEY-VALUE. 25 

I WANDERED out tliis momiiig under the trees (the good 
lady had gone to the village, and her daughter too ; and I 
was quite free, and was sliirking all work, and having a 
good time on the grass). That, you know, is a good way 
to write an article. It is bad to go out and look at things 
if you wish to write about them. You must let them look 
at you. You must show yourself to nature ; walk about 
confidently and lovingly; gaze at just those things that 
have magnetism in them, or sympathy, or influence, or 
whatever you choose to call it. Then, after an hour or 
two, if you wish to write, go to your desk, and whatever 
has had a real hold upon you will then come vividly up 
like pictures, — just as it does to me now ; and I should 
give you a sparkling, glorious article now, were it not 
that at this very nick of time I am interrupted by the 
word, that, if I send in time for this week, I must send 
this minute. Oh, what you have lost ! It was very fine 
— very — the thing 1 was about to do ! — Eyes and Ears. 



Down to the grave comes the millionnaire. " IIow 
much are you worth '? " says Death. " Men call me worth 
thii'ty millions." It is not enough to pay his ferriage ! 
But he goes through ; and when he has got thi-ough, his 
wealth having been taken from him, he is no bigger than 
a mosquito. There is hardly enough of him for a nucleus 
to stai-t on in the next life. — Sermon : Treasure that 
cannot he Stolen. 



26 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. 

" What's an old sailor good for but to know all the 
odds and ends, and crinkum-crankums for young folks ? 
The only jolly folks in this world are young folks that 
ain't good for nothin' yet, and old folks that's past doiu' 
much. All the rest of the world are livin' in a pucker 
and a fume all the time." — Norwood : Tommy Taft. 



I HAVE heard men, in family prayer, confess their 
wickedness, and pray that God would forgive them the 
sins that they got from Adam ; but I do not know that I 
ever heard a father in family prayer confess that he had 
a bad temper. I never heard a mother confess in family 
prayer that she was irritable and snappish. I never 
heard persons bewail those sins which are the engineers 
and artificers of the moral condition of the family. The 
angels would not know what to do with a prayer that 
began, "Lord, thou knowest that I am a scold." — 
Sermon : Peaceahleness, 



The distinction between Abolitionists and Anti- 
slavery men is not one of doctrine, but of method. Mr. 
Garrison and Mr. Phillips said, "The North must save 
itself by disunion from complicity with slavery ; " but the 
great body of anti-slavery men said, " We cannot consent 
to that." I was one among the latter: I would not burn 
a barn in order to get rid of the rats. — Speech in 
Muiichesler. 



SPEECHES IN ENGLAND. 27 

It was like driving a team of runaway horses and 
making love to a lady at the same time. — Description of 
Speech in Liverpool^ 1863. 



You never can do any thing with an excited man or 
an excited crowd, taking them on the rising tide ; but if 
you can only get them to bawl for two hours, until they 
are tired, then there is some chance for you. — Sermon: 
Paul and Demetrius. 



First, the wonderful demand for cotton throughout 
the world, precisely when, from the invention of the 
cotton-gin, it became easy to turn it to service. Slaves 
that before had been worth from $300 to -1400, began 
to be worth fOOO : that knocked away one-third of 
adherence to the moral law. Then they became worth 
$700, and half the law went; then |800 or $900, and 
there was no such thing as moral law. And finally they 
were worth $1,000 or $1,200, and slavery became one of 
the Beatitudes. — Speech in Manchester. 



INIany of you object to our war because it is tear. 
Now, I must say, that for any Englishman to be opposed, 
on principle, to war, is a greater mark of sincerity and 
frankness than any thing I know of. You have two wars 
on hand now, and I hardly know the time when you have 
not had one. — Speech in London. 



28 BEECHER AS A HUMORfST. 

The great art of managing a congregation lies in 
this: be good-natured yourself, and keep them good- 
natured, and then they will not need any managing. — 
Lectures on Preaching. 



A REAL good-natured man is the most troublesome 
morsel that the malign passions ever attempt to feed 
upon. He is the natural superior of irritable persons. 
He that can govern himself can control others. An 
irritable man, whom any one can excite, is like a horse 
kept at livery, ridden by every one, and spurred by each 
rider. Nobody is so little his own master as he who can 
be stirred and provoked at another's will. — Eyes and 
Ears. 

In my own land, I have been the object of misrepresen- 
tation and abuse so long that when I did not receive 
it I felt there was something lacking in the atmosphere. 
— Speech in Glasgow. 



Apple-pie should be eaten while it is yet florescent, 
white or creamy yellow, with the merest drip of candied 
juice along the edges (as if the flavor were so good to it- 
self that its own lips watered !), of a mild and modest 
warmth; the sugar suggesting jelly, yet not jellied; the 
morsels of apple neither dissolved, nor yet in original sub- 
stance, but hanging, as it were, in a trance between the 
spirit and the flesh of applehood. — Eyes and Ears. 



EARL Y RISING. — TIIIE VER Y. 29 

Getting up early is venerable. Since there has been 
a literature or a history, the habit of early rising has 
been recommended for health, for pleasure, and for 
business. The ancients are held up to us for examples. 
But they lived so far to the east, and so near the siui, 
that it was much easier for them than for us. People 
in Europe always get up several hours before w^e do; 
people in Asia several hours before Europeans do; and 
we suppose, as men go toward the sun, it gets easier and 
easier, until, somewhere in the Orient, probably they step 
out of bed involuntarily, or, like a flower blossoming, 
they find their bedclothes gently opening and turning 
back, by the mere attraction of light. — Eyes and Ears. 



They are men who would not rob a bank ; they would 
not join a company of burglars, or any thing like that ; but 
they are men, who, if they saw on somebody's mantel-piece 
a snuff-box which was made out of the mulberry-tree that 
Shakspeare planted in his garden, might take it up, and 
might be tempted to forget where they put it w'hen they 
laid it down ; and therefore it might be found in their 
cabinet, and not in the other man's. — Sermon : The 
Nature and Sources of Temptation. 



A MAN who runs away from a thief in his house is a 
Bneak, and does not deserve a house. — Sekmon : Loving 
and Hating. 



30 BEECH ER AS, A HUMORIST. 

To-day T was at work among my grape-vines, when my 
attention was attracted by two robins that were making 
a great racket. I was sure by their actions that they had 
young ones which they thought to be in danger. And I 
said, "Why, you old fools! I won't hurt you nor your 
little birds." Just then I heard a noise that I recog- 
nized; and I said, " The cat is here." And sure enough, 
looking down, I saw the cat curled up under the trellis. 
It was the sight of him that had set the birds all agog, 
" What is he doing here ? " I asked. He had no business 
there, — and all the more because I had just written an 
article saying that my cats had been so brought up that I 
did not believe any of them hunted birds ! In my indig- 
nation, I seized him by the neck, and walked off with him 
to the other side of the cherry-orchard, and gave him an 
opportunity to find out how it would seem if he were fly- 
ing. And I sent one or two stones after him by way of 
application. — Lecture-room Talks. 



Did you ever see a boyhood that was not a mystery of 
Providence ? Are not boys always in men's way ? Evi- 
dently, boys have no part, no place, and no function, in 
society. If they could be shot at birth, like an arrow, 
straight up to manhood, that would be another matter; 
but they are not. And did you ever know a neighborhood 
that had not the worst boys in the world ? Did you ever 
know a neighbor whose boys were not the worst that ever 
lived? — Sermon : Bearing One Another's Bwdens. 



SWEARING. 31 

" The Doctor's not at home, you say ? That's my luck ! 
But what a blessin' to this town to have such a minister 
in't ! Sez I to Hiram, t'other day, sez I, ' Hiram, you 
ought to be a better man than you be, seein' you have sech 
extraordinary preachin' and example.' But Hiram, you 
know, marm, though nowise vicious, is not given to sper- 
itual things. More's the pity ! But what a privilege it 
must be to you, marm, to be his wife ! Remarkable that 
sech a blessin' should be given to just one woman ! Your 
husband don't never swear, marm, does he ? " 

The start of unaffected amazement with which Mrs. 
Buell echoed the word " swear ! " seemed infinitely grati- 
fying to Tommy, who raised and lowered his shaggy eye- 
brows several times, saying with each movement, — 

" Of course not — of course not. 1 knew he didn't. If 
anybody had told me that Dr. Buell swore, 1 wouldn't a 
b'lieved it on oath. Impossible ! impossible ! Jest think 
of it — the Doctor swearin'. Oh, it's beautiful to see a 
man that don't swear and don't want to ! But really, 
marm — when you see how wicked folks is — what ugly 
things they will do — don't you think it's kind o' natural 
to swear ? Not profane swearin', of course, but pious 
swearin'." . . . 

" J\Iy dear," said INIrs. Buell to her husband, " don't you 
think Tommy Taft is near to the kingdom .'' He seems 
to me to have much that's good in him. 1 can't but 
hope there's a work going on slowly in him." 

" Yes — very slowly." — Norioood. 



32 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

Newton sat in an orchard ; and an apple, plumping 
down on his head, started a train of thouglit which opened 
the heavens to us. Had it been in California, the size 
of the apples there would have saved hiin the trouble of 
much thinking thereaftei', perhaps, opening the heavens 
to him, and not to us. — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. 



There are only two or three things required for a good 
stone wall. It must be made so that chipmonks can run 
in and out easily ; it must have woodbine enough, in spots ; 
it must have a deal of mosses growing on it ; and it must 
be broad enough on the top for one to walk on. I know 
of nothing else which a good wall requires. — Eyes and 
Ears. 

The Pope of Rome is a good man. He has acted as a 
good Christian under the most enormous difficulties. Pius 
IX. and I will sing hymns in heaven together one of 
these days, and I expect to have some sport with him 
if humor don't die out in the mean time. — Sermon : 
Conscience. 

And as to those impertinent persons, those little speci- 
mens of men, who would kick their Bible overboard 
because they have found out, by reading in the corner of 
some newspaper, that the Scriptures are not true — I need 
not waste words upon such bubbles, that break if you 
touch them. — Sermon : The Two Revelations. 



CONFiCIENCE. — HA Y-RIDING. — A PUZZLER. 33 

Hospitality does not ask you to sit on a log because 
a log is necessary to the building of a house. I would as 
lief sit on the square end of a log all iny life as to live 
with men, who, though they have conscience, are harsh 
and unlovely and unfruitful because there is nothing in 
them to cover up that conscience. — Seumon : Tlie Bailie 
of Benevolence. 

A CHILD that has not ridden up from the meadow to 
the barn on a load of hay has yet to learn one of the lux- 
uries of exultant childhood. "What care they for jolts, 
when the whole load is a vast and multiplex spring ? 
The more the wagon jounces, the better they like it! 
Then come the bars, leadmg into the lane with maple- 
trees on each side. The limbs reach down, and the green 
leaves kiss the children over and over again. So would I, 
if I were a green leaf, and not consider myself so gx'een 
after all ! — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming. 



There was no excess and no absurdity which he 
would not zealously defend, if some sober and literal man 
sought logically to corner him. He disputed axioms, 
refused to admit first principles, laughed at premises, and 
ran down conclusions, dogmatized and madly asserted, 
with the merriest and absurdest indifference to all con- 
sistency ; for which there is no parallel, unless it be that 
of a very lively horse, in a very large pasture, with a very 
gouty man trying to catch him. — Norwood. 



34 BE EC II ER AS A HUMORIST. 

When Christianity is developed through an inordinate 
ecclesiasticisni, it makes me think of some children that 
you have seen dressed — very small babies, rolled up and 
rolled wp and rolled up in such a multitude of caps and 
ribbons and blankets that it took half an hour to get 
down to the spot where you heard some faint crying ! 
Christianity has been swathed, and bandaged, and wound 
up, and covered up, for the sake, it is said, of its symbols, 
and sealed with stamps and signs and signets, till it was 
no bigger than a cricket; while the Church was bigger 
than a whole castle. Christianity has been smothered in 
its robes. — Sermon : Christian Manhood in America. 



I WENT through all the colic and anguish of hyper- 
Calvinism while I was yet yoiuig. Happily, my consti- 
tution was strong. I regard the old hyper-Calvinistic 
system as the making of as strong men as ever lived on 
the face of this earth ; but 1 think it kills five hundred 
where it makes one. — Address : London Congregational 
Board. 

]\Iy mother dedicated me to the work of the foreign 
missionary; she laid her hands upon me, wept over 
me, and set me apart to preach the gospel among tlie 
heathen. And I have been doing it all my life long ; for 
it so happens, one does not need to go far from his own 
country to find his audience before him. — Addijess: 
London Congregational Board. 



ORIGINAL SIN. — BAPTISM. — COMMON SENSE. 35 

What about original sin? There has been so much 
actual transgression, that I have not had time to go back 
oil to that. — Address : London Congregational Board. 



Under my platform in Brooklj'n I have a baptistery; 
and if anybody's son or daughter, brought up in Baptist 
ideas, wants to be immersed, you won't catch me reason- 
ing with them : I baptize them. So it is that I immerse, 
I sprinkle, and I have in some instances poured ; and I 
never saw there was any difference in the Christianity 
that was made. — Address : London Congregational 
Board. 

After all, is it not wonderful that men do so well as 
they do ? Consider how many men you daily meet, most 
of them with pleasure, and few of them with real annoy- 
ance. Common sense, at least in its lower forms, is more 
common than we are apt to think. — Eyes and Ears. 



The average and general influence of a man's teaching 
will be more mighty than any single misconception, or 
misapprehension through misconception. A man might 
run around, like a kitten after its tail, all his life, if he 
were going around explaining all his expressions, and all 
the things he had written. Let them go. They will 
correct themselves. — Address : New-York and Brooklyn 
Association. 



36 BEECUER AS A HUMORIST. 

How many persons say, " That cliild is coming to the 
gallows : it is like a witch ! " or, " That child is a little 
thief ! " Nineteen out of every twenty women are 
mothers of a little thief, or a little liar, or a little pig, 
or a little fox, or a little wolf, or a little serpent, — al- 
though we rock our cradles, and call our babes angels. — 
Sermon : The Fruits of Palience. 



A MINISTER who is Very beautiful, and superlatively 
graceful, sets people to admiring him. They make a 
kind of monkey-god of him, and it stands in the way of 
his usefulness. From this temptation most of us have 
been mercifully delivered. — Lectures on Preaching. 



If one will take the trouble to watch his own mind, or 
— which he will find to be a great deal more natural — 
to watch the conduct of his neighbors, he will observe 
how readily men listening to discourse believe more 
firmly what they believed before. If I were to urge the 
benefits of an easy and good-natured contentment in life, 
the anxious and the careful would shake their heads, and 
fear that these qualities would lead to carelessness and 
mischief. Whereas, all the heedless and jovial, who live 
for one day at a time, and never provide for to-morrow, 
would jump at the doctrine, and rejoice in its wisdom. — 
Eyes and Ears. 



FAMILY SECRETS. — A BOBOLINK. 37 

Another fair heart has suffered itself to fall into 
shocking doubts : — 

" Dear Sir, — It is with great pleasure that I read your arti- 
cles; and I have esjDecially relished your ' Summer Dinner,' 
which was got up in such good style. But — and this is wliat 
is very important — did you have to aslc your wife the differ- 
ent names of the vegetables, and how to cook themV Or do 
you believe in Men's Rights, and so know how to do your 
own cooking, seasoning, and eating? " 

The family should be sacred. This attempt to pry into 
its secrets must not succeed. This question answered, 
the next one would be, whether we wrote our own articles 
for " The Ledger," or whether some one dictated them to 
us? And then would comi questions as to who wi'ote 
the sermons? Then, when once the stream had broken 
over the bounds of proper privacy, it would rush through 
kitchen aud pantry, closet and cupboard, cellar and attic, 
until the slime of curiosity w'ould lie thick on all the 
sacred places of the household. 

" Ask our wife," forsooth ! We asked her once for all, 
some years ago; and the answer lasts, full aud strong, 
until this day. — Eyes and Ears. 



There, on the very topmost twig, that rises and falls 
with willowy motion, sits that ridiculous but sweet- 
singing bobolink, singing, as a Roman-candle fizzes, 
showers of sparkling notes. — Eyes and Ears. 



38 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

Beauty is generally unfavorable to good dispositions. 
(I am talking to the ladies now.) There seems to be 
some dissent, but this is the orthodox view. It seems as 
if the evil incident to human nature had struck in, with 
handsome people, leaving the surface fair; while the 
homely are so, because the virtue within has purged and 
expelled the evil, and driven it to the skin. — Fruits, 
Flowers, and Fanning. 



There are some men who never wake up enough to 
swear a good oath. The man who sees the point of a 
joke the day after it is uttered, — because Jie never is 
known to act hastily, is he to take credit for that? — 
Sermon : Conscience. 



At a friend's houce, lately, I saw what was apparently 
a little book lying on the table; and I took it up. On 
the outside was, *' The Portrait of an Angel." On 
opening it, I found that it was a mirror. And, O ! what 
an angel I saw in it ! — Sermon : 71ie ReVujion of Hope. 



If one limb is shorter than the other, we can splice 
out the shoe; but if a man is born without common 
sense, I do not know of any crutch or splice that will 
supply the lack. He must wiggle on the best ^yay he 
can. — Sermon : The Prujil of Godliness. 



MOSQUITOES. — DISCIPLINE. — MORALITY. 39 

Gnats, fleas, bed-bugs, chiggers, and othex' things that 
shall be nameless, make a business of supplying their 
hunger, without refinement, without the accompaniments 
of conversation, or any refinements whatsoever. It is 
mere appetite. But a mosquito will not gorge himself 
for the sake of eating. He first offers you a song. — 
Eyes and Ears. 

I REMEMBER Very well, when I used to come in from 
my sports, soiled and sniouched (for I did not spare 
myself), and was to be brought into decent society, and 
it was necessary for the sisterly hand to rub the dirt 
from my face, I never liked it. And I know that when 
my hair, that went with the winds, and played with every 
one of them, had to be smoothed out, I never liked the 
passage of the comb through it — although they were 
seeking beauty. (I hope they found it!) When I had 
committed any offence, and it became necessary for me 
to see that I had violated the law of kindness and to feel 
those mysterious tinglings, which were eye-openers, these 
things were not pleasant to me. — Sermon: GoiVs 
Disinterestedness. 

A MORA!, man is like an empty bottle well corked, so 
that no defilement can get into it, so that it may be kept 
pure within. Pure ? And what is the use of a bottle 
that is pure, if it is empty and corked up? — Sermon- 
Using One's Life for Others. 



40 BEECEER AS A HUMORIST. 

Even to this hour, the first acquaintance with oysters 
is with much hesitation and squeamish apprehension. 
Who, then, first gulped the dainty thing, and forever after 
called himself blessed ? — Eyes and Ears. 



Then, again, I like these dinners, because there is no 
wine in them. Yet I must confess, that a liberal use of 
wine makes after-dinner speaking much easier. JNlen 
will then laugh heartily at the oldest kind of a chestnut. 
Then, again, I like these dinners because they don't 
smoke here. My wife can bear witness, that, after I 
have attended one of those grand dinners, my clothes 
smell of tobacco for two days. And I do not want to 
smell of smoke, either in this world or the world to come. 
— Baptist Uxion : After-dinner Speech. 



The grave is God's bankrupt court, which clears a 
man of his property and his debts at the same time. 
— Sermon : Treasure that cannot be Stolen. 



" What a pity," said Uncle Tommy, with a very sober 
air, "that babies weren't born like books! Then they 
wouldn't trouble anybody — could put 'em up on a shelf, 
have 'em always dry — take 'em down when you want to 
use 'em — never grow any bigger — no trouble to any- 
body. " — Norwood. 



SENSE. — AD VICE. — RELIGION. — MOTHS. 41 

Godliness does not teach a crow to sing like a 
nightingale. If a man has gone into a business which 
he is not fit for, he cannot make up what he lacks by 
taking part in prayer-meeting, or distributing tracts, or 
any thing of that kind. A man must use his good sense 
in adapting himself to his business. — Sermon : The 
Profit of Godliness. 

Do you think oxen better, on the whole, for farm- 
work, than horses ? I seriously wish your advice as to 
which I had better have. For I have just bought a pair 
of oxen, and am, like most men, now ready to ask advice 
under circumstances which make it impossible for me to 
take it, unless it accords with a foregone fact. — Eyes and 
Ears. 

Men have very largely had presented to them the 
machinery of religion instead of religion ; as if a farmer 
should present to you ploughs, crowbars, harrows, carts, 
wagons, spades, and they should produce the impression 
on you that those were the only apples and pears that 
were on the farm. — Sermon : " My Yoke is Easy." 



It always seemed to me, that, however mischievous to 
us was a moth's appetite, it must be a very lean and mel- 
ancholy thing to him, to eat dry cloth, with nothing to 
drink, growing fat upon rubbish, and washing it down 
with darkness. — Eyes and Ears. 



42 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. 

Don't mope. Be a boy as long as you live. Laugh 
a good deal. Frolic every day. Keep up high spirits. 
A low tone of mind is unhealthy. There's food and 
medicine in nerve. Quantity and quality of nerve mark 
the distinctions between animals and between men, from 
the bottom of creation to the top. — Norwood. 



The old-fashioned way of preparing a sermon was 
where a man. sat down with his pipe, and smoked and 
"thought," as he called it, and after one or two or tliree 
hours, — his wife saying to everybody in the mean time, 
" Dear man, he is up-stairs studying. He has to study so 
hard ! " — in which he has been in a muggy, fumbling 
state of mind, he at last comes out with the product of 
it for the pulpit. It is like unleavened bread, doughy, 
dumpy, and heavy; hard to eat, and harder to digest. 
Thei'e has been nothing put in it to vitalize it. — Lectures 
on Preaching. 

The most melancholy singing I ever heard was that of 
a bullfinch in a cage, that had been taught little operatic 
airs, and whistled them over and over until I wanted to 
wring its neck. Any such training in human life as 
takes out spontaneity, elasticity, and originality ; as hides 
all those glorious impulses and spurts of necessary life ; 
all reduction of a man's life to a mathematical prob- 
lem, — is to be avoided. — Sekmon : Man-Building. 



GIVING. — FUN. — BIRDS. — L UXURY. 43 

When the miser is called to face the contribution-box, 
and all the neighbors are looking at him, and he has 
to deny himself, he puts in his contribution, saying, 
inside, tearfully, " Good-by ! " it is a self-denial to him. — 
Sermon : Bearing, but not Ooerhorne. 



You cannot make a man laugh because he ought to 
laugh. You may analyze a jest, or a flash of wit, and 
present it to a man, saying, " Here are the elements of 
mirth ; and these being presented to you as I now present 
them, if you are a rational being you will accept the 
statement of them, and laugh." But nobody laughs so. 
People laugh first, and afterwards think why they laughed. 
The feeling of mirth is first excited, and afterwards the 
intellect analyzes that which produced the laughter. It 
converts into an idea that which was first an emotion or 
an experience. — Sermon : Heart Conviction. 



SnoOT and eat my birds ? It is but a step this side of 
cannibalism. The next step beyond, and one would han- 
ker after Jenny Lind or Miss Kellogg. — Fruits, Flowers, 
and Farming. 

Luxury men are afraid of. So am I, if it is pig's lux- 
ury, but not if it is angelic luxury. — Sermon : Moral 
Theory of Civii Liberty. 



44 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

" A LONG bridge to walk over, Doctor ! " 

"Do peoi^le always miud the law, and keep upon a 
walk ? " 

" That depends. When the boys are on a spree, and 
have had a little suthin', I alias raises a trot about here : 
they thinks the bridge too long. But when a feller's 
along with his gal, he alius thinks the bridge too short ; 
and he's particular about keepin' the law. Only last 
week I was about here, and I heerd a sort of smack 
behind me ; and the horses thought I was chirrupin' for 
'em to go on, and started off. But I cooled 'em down, and 
began to whistle, like, so that you couldn't hear any little 
sound. The fact is. Doctor, young folks will be young 
folks ; and I never was one of them as wanted to larf at 
'em. Let 'em have their time. I think it rather beauti- 
ful like to see young folks take to each other. The Lord 
knows they'll have trouble enough afore they get through 
livin' with each other, and it would be a shame to spile 
the beginnin', when it's all sweet and pretty, like. 

"No," said Hiram, virtuously straightening up : "when 
Zeke Lash driv over one day, and interrupted some little 
cooin' and billin' that he had no business with, and I 
heard him tellin' of it in the stable — 'You're a darned 
fool,' sez I ; ' and if it had been any of my folks, I'd made 
you taste the horsewhip, every inch of it, from the tip 
of the lash to the butt end. I'd as soon throw stones 
at the birds whirlin' and kissin' in the air. When they 
are old, and we're used to 'em, I don't object to throw a 



SLEEP. — LAZY RELIGION. — VITALITY. 45 

stone or two at a robin. But any feller that would 
do it when they fust come — he^s a mean cuss ! " — 
Norwood : Hiram Beers. 



Never gauge the duration of your sleep by the time 
any one else sleeps. Some men will tell you that John 
Wesley had only so much sleep, Hunter, the great physi- 
ologist, so much, and Napoleon so much. But when 
the Lord made you, as a general thing he did not make 
Napoleons. Every man carries within himself a Mount 
Sinai, a revealed law, written for himself separately. — 
Lectures on Preaching. 



Prayer is often an argument of laziness : " Lord, my 
temper gives me a vast deal of inconvenience, and it 
would be a great task for me to correct it ; and wilt thou 
be pleased to correct it for me, that I may get along 
easier ? ' If prayer was answered under such circum- 
stances, independent of action of natural laws, it would 
be paying a premium on indolence. — Lecture-room 
Talks : Answers to Prayer. 



In the Park I see people that are dead, though living; 
and in Greenwood I see people that are dead, and stay 
dead. —Sermon : A Safe Guide for Young Men. 



46 B EEC HER AS A HUMORIST. 

There is a class of men that we often meet, who might 
be called not so much religious talkers as I'eligious chat- 
terers. I have myself suffered from their inflictions. 
Men they are, who, when they talk, go off like a watch- 
man's rattle, and with a sound as dry and sharp. — 
Lecture-room Talks : Conversing with the Impenitent. 



There are a great many people who seem to think 
that religion means not doing lorong. As if a knitting- 
machine that never knit any stockings would be con- 
sidered good because it never misknit ! What is a man 
good for who simply does not do some things ? — 
Sermon : Law and Liberty. 



Many persons say that they are going to heaven be- 
cause they " have a hope." What is a hope ? Suppose a 
snake should take its last year's skin, which it has cast 
off, and think it was bigger for that old, dry skin ! It 
would be very much like a Christian who takes what he 
calls his hope, that was never worth much, and that be- 
comes less and less valuable the older it grows, and rests 
upon that. — Sermon : As a Little Child. 



This world was made for poor men ; and therefore the 
greatest part of it was left out of doors, where everybody 
could enjoy it. — Eyes and Ears. 



GIFTS. — RESOL UTIONS. — PROVIDENCE. 47 

You cannot have wit enough, you cannot have good- 
nature enough, you cannot have artistic talent enough, 
you cannot have imagination enough, provided you ap- 
preciate their vahie, and see them in the light of the 
uses to which they may be put, for the good of your 
fellow-meu. — Sermon : Keeping the Faith. 



Do not be a spy on yourself. A man who goes down 
the street thinking of himself all the time, with critical 
analysis, whether he is doing this, that, or any other 
thing, — turning himself over as if he were a goose on a 
spit before a fire, and basting himself with good reso- 
lutions, — is simply belittling himself. — Lectures on 
Preaching. 

When God wants to work a providence, he does not 
think it necessary that he should whisper and say, 
"Clouds, go down and rain on Beecher's farm." He 
says to i7ie, " Subsoil your land ; " and when I have done 
that, I shall have a cistern which will supply all the 
moisture that my crops need, without the aid of plumbers, 
thank God ! and without any pipes. — Sermon : Special 
Providence. 

If there is one thing more odious than another, it is 
decaying fat. But if there is money in it, how sweet is 
the perfume, — at least to the men that stand in the midst 
of it ! — Sermon : Self-Contrql Possible to AIL 



48 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. 

You have got to drive prayer-meetings just as you do 
horses. You cannot keep flies from biting them, nor 
them from whisking their tails, in a summer's day. . . . 
The absurd saints that I have had, tlie ridiculous crea- 
tures that have come in, the interruptions that we have 
had ! Meetings brought to a blessed point, — like a cow 
that has given a good bucket of milk, only to put her foot 
in it, — to be entirely ruined ! — Lectures on Preaching. 



On one occasion a well-intentioned but feeble-minded, 
feeble-voiced woman arose in Plymouth prayer-meeting, 
and meandered on for a long time in mystical, meaning- 
less talk. When she finally sat down, ^Mr. Beecher (who 
bad sat motionless, with downcast eyes, all the while) 
looked up with the play of a humorous twinkle on his 
face, but said with a perfectly serious voice, " Neverthe- 
less, — I am in favor of women's speaking. Sing eight 
thirty-eight" (or whatever the number was). 



Why did not the apple-tree grow on the top of a hill? 
And why did not the slope of the hill run down into 
every man's cellar, so that every apple that dropped 
should roll into a bin in his cellar, without any eifort on 
his part ? Why was not every thing some thing, and 
some thing every thing? In short, why did God make 
every thing as he did ? — Sermon : The Conflicts of Life. 



DIVISION-WALLS. — APPLES. 49 

Free trade between churches and ministers ! I am 
"free-trade" on that if I am not anywhere else. Was 
there ever any thing so foolish, so absurd, so squeamish, 
as all this talk about the sanctity of the church, and 
about a man's loyalty to his denomination ? You might 
as well talk about my loyalty to the fences round about 
my farm. Fences are very good things against cattle, 
but you need not make a life-and-death matter of them. 
" — Sermon : Concord, not Unison. 



When the day was done, and the candles were lighted, 
and the supper was out of the way, we all gathered about 
the great kitchen-fire ; and soon after, George or Henry 
had to go down for apples. Generally it was Henry. A 
boy's hat is a universal instrument. It is a bat to smack 
butterflies with, a bag to fetch berries in, a basket for 
stones to pelt frogs withal, a measure to bring up apples 
in. And a big-headed boy's old felt hat was not stingy 
in its quantities; and when its store ended, the errand 
could always be repeated. To eat six, eight, and twelve 
apples in an evening was no great feat for a growing 
young lad, whose stomach was no more in danger of 
dyspepsia than the neighborhood mill, through whose 
body passed thousands of bushels of corn, leaving it no 
fatter at the end of the year than at the beginning. 
Cloyed with apples ? To eat an apple is to want to eat 
another. — Fruits, Flowers, and Farming, 



50 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

If a man can get rich by looking, I am on the royal 
road to wealth. And, indeed, it is true wealth that the 
eye gets, and the ear, and all the finer senses, — riches 
that cannot be hoarded or squandered; that ^11 may have 
in common ; that come without meanness, and abide 
without corrupting. — Eyes and Ears. 



I AM astonished at these Chinese myself! They have 
seen so many beautiful exhibitions of Christian character, 
that they must be very stupid not to admire it. It must 
be that they are bereft of natural reason, not to be fasci- 
nated with California piety, and not to fall in love with 
the religion of the emigrants from the East ! AVhy, 
what have we not done to convert them? We have 
thrashed them, and kicked them ; we have hung them on 
trees ; almost every gospel influence has been brought to 
bear upon them ; but the fellows will not be converted ! 
Well, it may be that some nations are outside of mercy. 
— Sermon : Christian Manhood in A merica. 



Maxy persons boil themselves down to a kind of 
molasses goodness ! IIow many there are that, like flies 
caught in some sweet liquid, have got out at last upon 
the side of the cup, and crawl along slowly, buzzing a 
little to clear their wings ! Just such Christians I 
have seen, creeping up the side of churches, soul-poor, 
imperfect, and drabbled. — All-sidedness in Christian Life. 



SECTS. — INSECTS. — PRECOCITY. — DISCORD. 51 

All sects are merely pockets in the garments of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. And it does not make any difference 
whether you go to heaven in a side-pocket or in a skirt- 
pocket. To get into heaven is the main thing, after 
all. — Sermon : The Beauty of Moral Qualities. 



1 HAVE no vicarious mission for these populous insects. 
But I will at least not despise their littleness, nor trample 
upon their lives. Yet, how may I spare them ? . At 
every step I must needs crush scores, and leave the 
wounded in my path ! Already 1 have lost my patience 
with that intolerable fly, and slapped him out of being, 
and breathed out fiery vengeance against those mean 
conspirators that, night and day, suck my blood, 
hypocritically singing a grace before their meal ! — Star 
Papers. 

Deliver me from premature saintship! I cannot 
endure to see a girl forty years old before she is five, or 
to see a boy imitating Isaiah or Dante when he is not 
yet out of his pantalets. — Sermon : The Training of 
Children. 

How they slander and backbite one another! But 
they do it because they think other churches are not 
orthodox. They play devil because they hate the Devil 
so. — Sermon : The Vital Principle. 



52 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

Alas ! I am like a music-teacher, that stands the 
■whole day teaching cubs how to paw the keys, and hears 
things mauled and murdered, until his hungry ear dies, 
almost, with his tasks. — Sermon : The Beauty of Moral 
Qualities. 

I HAD an idea that heaven was a place where every- 
body could sing, and was singing ; but the subject- 
matter of what they sang, I had no conception of. I was 
brought up in a back-country, where singing was a duty 
performed as best it might be by those who engaged in 
it; and my suggestions and imaginations concerning it 
were not very radiant. I had a notion that the saints 
stood around the throne, and sang ; and my imagination 
had been helped by seeing long rows of angels, like wax 
candles, represented in pictures. I had an idea that 
angels stood about the throne, very white and very pure, 
and recited before God what they thought of him. I 
did not like it, and I thought I was a miserable wretch 
because I did not. — Lecture-room Talks : Praise and 
Prayer. 

Christianity looks in many of the exhibits that are 
made of it, intellectually and doctrinally, as a man would 
if he had been dead ten years, and there was nothing but 
his ghastly, gaping skull left of him. But when Paul 
speaks of Christianity, he speaks of it as a life which is 
glowing and beautiful. — Sermon : The Golden Net. 



THEOLOGIC DEITY. — DEVIL IN RELIGION. 53 

Theologians have brought out God, and what a mis- 
erable mess they have made of it ! The creeds and cat- 
echisms as representing God are very much like the 
children's ark, where wooden chumps are made with stifE 
legs, of all sorts, to represent animals. The God of the 
creeds is very much like a wooden god, and, for that 
matter, made for children. — Sermon : Knowing God. 



I REMEMBER a minister who came to our house when 
I was a boy. He used to talk with us children on the 
subject of religion, and he told me some hobgoblin 
stories about bad boys. And, oh, they were the nauf/hdest, 
the wickedest, boys that ever lived ! He told me how a 
bad boy got sick, how he saw the Devil coming after 
him, and how he cried, " O mother, mother ! there is the 
Devil ! There he is as far as the onion-bed ! There he 
is coming through the gate ! There he is inside the 
door! " I saw forty devils in the air. I dreamed of them. 
I did not for years shake off the feeling of terror which 
that conversation produced on my mind. — Lecture- 
room Talks : Assurance of Salcation. 



Whether Ireland ever will be quiei, depends upon 
how many Irishmen emigrate. They are like whiskey, 
— not to be taken straight, but in mixture. — Sermon : 
The Year among the Nations, 



54 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

Look at Herbert Spencer's God : it is nothing. It is 
exactly what the annual joke of our Professor Snell, in 
Amherst College, was, when he said, "Gentlemen, you 
will perceive this invisible ball ! " I do not revile Her- 
bert Spencer ; many of the stones that will shine out by 
and by in the completed temple of God will have come 
from his hands ; but I think his writings should be taken 
as the disciples took the wheat, which they ate, rubbing it 
in their hands. — Lectures on Preaching. 



Old Dr. Champion (one of the predecessors of my 
father's pulpit in Litchfield, Conn.), in the latter part 
of his ministry thought he had sinned away the day of 
grace, and that he was going to hell; and he never showed 
himself so much a Christian as in the disposition which 
he manifested at the time. If it was God's will that he 
should go there, he was willing to go. He did not know 
what he should do in hell, till one day he solved the ques- 
tion satisfactorily in his own mind, and said, " I will open 
a prayer-meeting there ! " He thought it would afford 
him some balm and consolation. I do not think that 
man ever got there. — Sermon : Sin against the Holy 
Ghost. 

If you will only make your ideal mean enough, you 
can every one of you feel that you are heroic. — Sermon : 
The Use of Ideals. 



INDIVIDUALITY. — RESTLESS AMBITION. 55 

I SUPPOSE, if we were to be apportioned off to our dif- 
ferent follies, it would take me ten years to repent of my 
folly in trying to be what I was never cut out to be. I 
tried my very hardest to be Brainerd ; and I should have 
succeeded, if God had not fixed it so that I could not. I 
tried to be Payson ; but Payson was dyspeptic, and I was 
not. I tried to be Henry Martyn, and wanted to be a 
missionary, and sit under a tree in Persia, and say the 
things that he said, and think the things that he thought. 
In Amherst, I tried to live up to those ideals ; but I could 
not do it. "Who would think of pouring out on his plate 
mustard and vinegar and pepper, and such things, and 
making a dinner of them ? These things are good to 
wake up and quicken the appetite, but are not to be used 
as steady food ; and so those lives are good as examples 
for the purpose of stimulation, but they are to be used 
with discrimination. No man is to sit before any of these 
ideals for his portrait. You might as well send your 
neighbor to the photographer's to sit for your picture, or 
to the tailor to be measured for your clothes, because you 
admire his looks, as to take for your pattern of life men 
who are themselves, but not you. — Sermon : The Merci- 
fulness of the Bible. 

Everybody has a chance for every thing, we are told ; 
everybody is born to be somebody, in this country. And 
therefore everybody is a-whirling and a-whizzing from 
the very cradle. — Sermon : Borrowing Trouble. 



56 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

No man, then, need hunt among hair-shirts ; no man 
need seek for blankets too short at the bottom and too 
short at the top; no man need resort to iron seats or 
cushionless chairs; no man need shut himself up in grim 
cells ; no man need stand on the tops of towers or col- 
umns, — in order to deny himself. — Sekmon : Problem of 
Joy and Suffering in Life. 



I DO not want to hatch crows. Not for me are such 
birds. Birds of paradise, I want. I want canary-birds. 
I want larks. I want singing-birds. And you cannot 
have your plumage too gay. — Sermon : The Right and 
the Wrong Way of Giving Pleasure. 



The plague-stricken city has a great many persons that 
are sentimentally affected by the sufferings of the poor, 
— a great many that feel very much for the poor ; and the 
feeling is expended in " Ohs ! " and " Ahs ! " of persons 
that are getting ready with all their might to go off into 
the country. — Sermon : Conduct, the Index of Feeling. 



There is nothing more common than for men to hang 
one motive outside whei-e it can be seen, and keep the 
others in the background to turn the machinei'y. — 
Sermon : Paul and Demetrius. 



SELF-DECEFTION. — INFL UENCE. — VIRTUE. 57 

A MAN in a very humble frame of mind says, "I am 
afraid I do not do all^that I do fi'om that single motive, a 
desire to honor and glorify God. I think I have detected 
something else." Oh ! you have detected something else, 
have you ? You are like an owl that creeps out of the 
tree about ten o'clock in the morning, and hoots, and 
says, " I think I see the sun's light somewhere." One 
would suppose that it might be light at that time — to 
any thing but an owl ! — Sermon : Motives of Action. 



I WISH you could stay in my house a month, and hear 
the applications that I have made to me by people who 
are out of business to get them employment. You know, I 
have so much influence! About half of New York think 
Town Washington, and Central Park, and Prospect Park, 
and the Brooklyn Navy-Yard, and the New- York Cus- 
tom-House, and sundry other great inheritances, and feel, 
if they do not get a position in one of these places when 
they apply, that it is on account of sheer ugliness on my 
part ! And yet, I never say No, nor turn away a well- 
meaning young man from my door, without a sigh. — 
Sermon : Earning a Licelihood. 



Men mean to get to heaven, but they do not mean 
that it shall cost them any more virtue than they can 
possibly help. — Sermon : Watchfulness. 



58 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

There are many persons who are believed to be chil- 
dren of grace, but who make it a point, once a day, at 
any rate, to eat themselves into a fair condition of 
stupidity. — Sermon : Physical Causes and Spiritual 
States. 



You should eat as you would fire an engine ; and sleep, 
remembering that out of sleep comes the whole foi'ce of 
wakefulness, with the power you have in it. — Lectures 
on Preaching. 

I SHOULD as soon think of going into my barn-yard and 
saying, " O Alderneys ! be careful about giving too much 
milk," as I should think of saying to men, " Avoid 
getting rich." I do not care how much milk my cows 
have. If it is good, rich milk, the more thei-e is of it, the 
better I like it. I have never exhorted men not to seek 
wealth ; but I have said to men, " Riches alone do not 
make manhood, nor produce happiness." A man may be 
rich, and be a fool. A man may be rich, and be miser- 
able. — Sermon : Earning a Livelihood. 



Suppose a man that had wolves' cubs to bring up, 
should compare himself with another man tliat had 
lambs to bring up ? It is one thing to bring up lambs, 
and another thing to bring up wolves' cubs. — Sermon : 
As a Little Child. 



CHURCHES. — EMOTIONS. — CITIES. — FACTS. 59 

The church is not obligatory any more than Fulton 
Ferry is. I can refuse to cross the river on the ferry- 
boat, and say, " I won't pay the cent or two cents. I am 
going to swim." I should have a right to swim if I pre- 
ferred, but I should be a fool if I did. And if you say, 
" I do not want to join the church," you are under no 
obligation to join it. — Sermon : As a Little Child. 



You cannot have antagonistic feelings together. If a 
child is angry, the nurse tries to make him laugh ; and he 
won't, he strives against it, because, when the laugh 
comes, away goes the temper. — Sermon : The Religious 
Uses of Music. 

Men talk to you about the great mischief which arises 
from young men leaving the country for the city. But 
talking against it is talking against the wind. You 
might as well read a lesson about the impropriety of the 
Gulf Stream rolling up and warming England, and leav- 
ing Greenland untouched. — Sermon : Lessons from the 
Great Chicago Fire. 



Never let a man in your congregation detect you in 
an inaccuracy if you can help it. If you speak about 
making wine, be sure you know about making it. (To 
do that, it is not necessary that you should know how to 
drink it, however.) — Lectures on Preaching. 



60 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. 

On the north-east side of our little pet farm there was, 
upon survey, found to be a jog, or angle. The line did 
not run from a given point straight through, but turned 
abruptly west, and then at right angles north. As soon 
as the plot of ground was mapped, we conceived a dis- 
like to that corner. It looked as if the next lot was pok- 
ing its horns into our sides. We did not fancy such an 
intrusive angle. The more we looked at it, the less we 
liked it. How to straighten our line became a very 
serious problem. To do it by cutting off any y>axt of our 
own acres was not to be thought of. To buy more land 
when you have enough, would be even worse. But who 
that owns an acre can resist the temptation of another 
acre ? Whether we bought or sold is nothing to the 
reader; but that line is straightened, and there is no jog 
in our east line, and the map looks very well, and we 
have not lost any ground. And we have a little more 
room for our orchard ! — Eyes and Ears. 



Nobody is so hard toward shiftless people as those 
tight, prudent people who are never shiftless. It would 
do you good if God would make you shiftless for about a 
month, and put you where you woiild receive the kicks 
and cuffs of men's lips. Then, when you go back to 
yourself again, you would have some compassion on men 
who are weak, and do not know how to get along. — 
Sermon : Beuriny One Another's Burdens. 



NE W-COMERS. — PRE A CUING. — SAL VA TION. 6 1 

The pumpkin-seed may be dropped in any corn-field, 
or in a mere hedge-row; and it waits but a few days 
before it lifts up the soil, and emits two great, honest, 
spoon-shaped leaves, that stand looking about in simple 
surprise, as if the world looked greatly different from 
■what they expected. — Eyes and Ears. 



The essential necessity is, that every preacher should 
be able to speak, whether with or without notes. Christ 
" spake." Peter, on the day of Pentecost, did not put on 
his specs, and read ; nor did any other apostle when 
called on to preach. — Lectures on Preaching. 



These newsboys stand at the head of a street, and 
send down their voice through it, as an athlete would roll 
a ball down an alley. We advise men training for 
speaking-professions to peddle wares in the streets for a 
little time. Young ministers might go into partnership 
with newsboys a while, till they got their mouths open, 
and their larynx nerved and toughened. — Eyes and 
Ears. 

You cannot expect that a man, while he is struggling 
to get out of the water, and on to the shore, will practise 
a dancing-master's paces. — Sermon : Treasure that 
cannot be Stolen. 



G2 BEECIIER AS A UUMORIST. 

Oh, hear men quarrel about churches ! Look at the 
churches, and see what they are. Where is thei'e a 
church that is much more than a raft for bringing men 
across the dehige ? Some are a little better, and some 
are a little worse ; but all are imperfect and poor. — 
Sermon : Working with God. 



I SHOULD like to see if men who stand still and do 
nothing are clothed like lilies. I notice that they who 
literally attempt to live without taking thought as to 
how they shall be clothed, are tatterdemalions. I should 
like to see if men would have all the food they want 
without taking thought. As I see them, they are eating 
out of swill-pails and garbage-carts, and are running 
round with baskets for scraps and fragments. Who are 
the men that are the best clothed and fed ? Are they the 
men who do not take any thought or care? It almost 
astounds one to think how very opposite the facts are 
from what the text says. If you take it literally, it kills. 
— Sermon : The BibU to he Spiritually Interpreted. 



Natural genius is but the soil, which, let alone, runs 
to weeds. If it is to bear fruit and harvests wortli the 
reaping, no matter how good the soil is, it must be 
ploughed and tilled with incessant care. — Lectures on 
Preaching, 



REFORMERS. — BO YS. 63 

All men are full of dogs. Temper is a snarly cur ; 
destructivenoss is a bull-dog; combativeness is a hound, 
that runs and barks and bites. We are full of dogs. 

When I was a boy, I would go over to Aunt Bull's, 
■who had several ugly dogs about her premises. I used 
to go barefooted, and make as little noise as possible, 
and climb over fences, and go a roundabout way, so as, 
if possible, to get into the house before the dogs knew 
that I was coming. If I had acted as many reformers 
do, I should have gone with my pockets full of stones, 
and fired handful after handful at the dogs, and in the 
universal barking and hullabaloo should have said, " See 
■what a condition of things this is ! What a reformation 
is needed here ! How the dogs bark and bite ! " Who 
made them do it ? Thousands of men are set to barking, 
and venomously biting, because that which is bad in 
them is so treated that it is roused up, not only into 
oppugnancy, but into domiuaucy. — Sermon : Peaceable- 
ness. 

He is not a Sunday-school boy at all. He is not fit to 
have his life written, and put into a library ; but he is 
just as nimble as a grasshopper. He runs and jumps 
first, and then considers where he lands. And the most 
amusing thing is, to see the mother moaning and worry- 
ing about the child. Work and wait. Do not remit 
any work ; but the worry, — remit that. — Sermon : 
Patience. 



G4 BEECIIER AS A nUMORIST. 

Long live the chestnut-tree, and the chestnut woods on 
the mountain-side, and the boys and girls who frolic 
under their boughs! And long live the winter nights, 
with the homely fare of apples and nuts, and no stronger 
drink than cider ; and a merry crowd of boys and girls, 
with here and there the spectacled old folks ; all before a 
roaring hickory-fire, in an old-fashioned fireplace, big as 
the Western horizon with the sun going down in it, and 
with a roguish stick of chestnut wood in it, which opens 
such a fusillade of snaps and cracks as sets the girls to 
screaming, and throws out such mischievous coals upon 
the calico dresses, as obliges every humane boy to run 
to the relief of his sweetheart all on fire 1 

No doubt, many an old gentleman will read this article 
with a face growing moi-e and more full of smiles, and 
taking off his spectacles at the end, and looking kindly 
over at his aged dame, will say, "Do you remember, 
Polly, when we were at Squire Judson's ? " — " Well, well, 
father, you are too old to be talking about such youthful 
follies." Nevertheless, she smiles, and looks kindly over 
at the old rogue, who kissed her that night, proposed on 
the way home, and was married before Christmas. — 
Eyes and Ears. 

The opinion of Solomon is not shared by men very 
generally. Conceit is very much in repute. People who 
are conceited, by no means think that they are fools : 
they think that Solomon was one. — Sermon : Conceit. 



PRAYER. — THE CLERGYMAN'S SPHERE. 65 

Did you ever know a person who could pray down an 
arithmetic? Did you ever know a person who, going 
to school, and finding himself puzzled by a tough prob- 
lem, could get it solved by asking God to solve it f©r 
him? Did you ever know anybody to accomplish any 
thing intelligently except by legitimate head-work ? — 
Lecture-room Talks : Ansiuers to Prayer. 



Suppose a person should say, " Here I have been 
shaking with chills and fever for weeks and months, and 
all the time there has been Peruvian bark next door, 
with which I might have cured myself, if I had known 
that it would cure me ; but I did not know it, though I 
constantly prayed God to cure me." You would say at 
once, " No prayer will ever bring you medicine. You 
must know that it exists, and then apply it, in obedience 
to natural laws, or it will not meet your case." — 
Lecture-room Talks : Answers to Prayer. 



A minister is not a man to know books alone. . . . 
You ought to know what is done in the barn, in the 
cellar, in the vineyard, and everywhere. You ought to 
know and understand a naturalist's enthusiasm when he 
finds a new flower or a new bug, — that ecstasy is almost 
like a heaven of heavens to the apocalyptic Johul — 
Lectures on Preaching. 



66 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

" A catalogue! " Good as a garden, madam, if you 
only think so. "A paper garden!" Yes, sir, a printed 
garden, and, if you only have eyes, as good as ever was 
made of dirt, and in some things a deal better! 

With my catalogue before me, I go on through the 
long list ; and every flower of them stands up before me, 
just as the sun will kiss them, and the wind shake hands 
with them, next summer. Yea, finer ! I shall never 
have such columbines in my garden as I carry in my 
head. I shall never see such bowers of morning-glories 
at Peekskill as spring up out of my catalogue. See 
those asters : was there ever a mortal bed of such mag- 
nificent blossoms as I see right before me ? 

"Where?" 

" There ! Don't you see ? " 

" I see nothing but your open pamphlet." 

"Oh, well! 'Eyes have they, but they see not.' Any 
fool could see what is right before him. To see what is 
not here, that is the true sight." 

And then, I have no trouble with my airy garden. I 
get along with the work so fast. There are no grubs in 
it, no rose-bugs, no aphides. Every thing grows without 
mildew or blight. 

This garden in the air is the only place that I 
know of where human nature is perfect, gardening in- 
expensive, luck always good, the season always fine, 
and flowers always a success. — Star Papers: Hortus 
Siccus. 



PREACnERS. — ELECTION. — APPRECIATION. 67 

It is supposed that a moral teacher must be a poor, 
dapper, nice little man, shut up to a kind of musical 
service of the sanctuary, where he has to stand like a 
feeble taper in a golden candlestick, or pipe out his lit- 
tle homily. — Sermon : Sphere of the Christian Minister. 



Thk Church of the Future will be no little ark carry- 
ing forty persons across the flood, and leaving all the rest 
of the world to drown. — Sermon : The Church of the 
Future. 

Tommy Taft met the minister at the door, and put 
out his great, rough hand to shake. 

" Thankee, Doctor, thankee ; very well done. Couldn't 
do it better myself. It'll do good — know it ! Feel bet- 
ter myself : I need just such preachin' — mouldy old sinner 
• — need a scourin' about once a week. Drefful wicked to 
hev such doctrine, and not be no better — ain't it, Doc- 
tor? " — Norwood. 

Never be grandiloquent when you want to drive 
home a searching truth. Don't whip with a switch that 
has the leaves on, if you want it to tingle. — Lectures on 
Preaching. 

There are no storms among thistle-down. — Sermon : 
A Bruised Reed. 



68 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. 

An eminent man, once, when a person was boasting in 
his presence, and saying that he thought he had over- 
come all his sinful tendencies, took a glass of water and 
dashed it in the man's face : he found out that the devil 
was there yet, not destroyed, though hidden ! — Sermon : 
Physical Hinderances in Sjnritual Life. 



The best of all properties in a speaking-hall, is a man 
that knows how to speak, and has something to speak 
with! What does a rooster care for acoustic aids? He 
mounts a fence lustily, gives a preliminary flap of his 
wings as if to say, " I could have flown twice as high," 
and then lets off a crow tliat rings and echoes for a mile 
ai'ound. A bull will sound you a bass-note that would 
make old Westminster Abbey shake. A crow will caw 
to you at two miles distance without the fear of bron- 
chitis. A dog will bark to a whole town without the 
slightest inconvenience — to himself. And yet men, who 
are brought up to speaking as the business of their lives, 
cannot make themselves heard at a hundred feet distance, 
or, only by exertions that send them home for liniments, 
bandages, and caustic! — Eyes and Ears. 



If one has sought rest in the country, he will be con- 
scious of the distinct luxury of sounds in distinction from 
noise. — Eyes and Ears. 



MODEST MERIT. — CLIMBING. — PRAISE. G9 

My dear Aunt Esther, who brought me up, — a woman 
so good and modest that she will spend ages in heaven 
wondering how it happened that she ever got there, 
while the angels will always be wondering why she 
was not there from all eternity. — Fruits, Floioer.t, and 
Fanning. 

There is a cat on a tree by my house. She went up 
last night clear into the topmost branches, and there she 
sits yet, for a cat cannot come down head first ; the 
claws w^ere made to work the other way : and to get 
down, she has to turn round and back down. It is just 
the opposite with men. It is a great deal easier for 
them to come down than to go uj). — Sermon : The 
Fruits of Patience. 

It is quite in vain for a man to eat so that he is 
dyspeptic, and at the same time attempt to live in a 
state of grace. — Sermox : Physical Causes and Spiritual 
States. 

An ! when a man is dead, and you are sure that he 
is out of the way, you can afford to praise him. It is 
when men are living that we are not so charitable. I 
have not the least particle of prejudice against the thistles 
that were on my place last year. It is those that are 
there now that I do not like. — Sermom : Using One's 
Life for Others. 



70 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

Is it stealing to take a dandelion through the fence ? 
Then we have made a gap in the Commandments a good 
many times. But are ethical rules quite as rigid upon 
dandelions as upon ducats and dollars? At any rate, 
we have never had remorse for pulling the first dandelion 
— if we could reach it. — Eyes and Ears. 



" ' Deacon Marble,' says I, ' if you would shove out 
of ye all your knowin's that ain't worth knowin', and 
then fill up with sober matter, you would be a sight 
better deacon, and a better man.' " 

♦' That's much so with folks in general." 

" Yes : folks ' heads is pretty much like their garrets, 
•where all the rubbish and broken things they've no use 
for down-stairs are stored away." — Norwood : Polly 
Marble. 

Many a man owes a great deal of his virtue to the 
fact of his having been kept busy. " Satan finds some 
mischief still for idle hands to do." Though Dr. Watts 
wrote that for children, you had better carry it through 
life. It will be as good for you at eighty as it was at 
eight. — Sermon : Physical Hinderunces in Spiriluul Life. 



I SET myself against the pope, only when he attempts 
to be my pope. I do not want him. I am pope enough 
for myself. — Sermon : Reason in Religion. 



SCANT VIRTUES. — YANKEES. — HUMAN BOGS. 71 

If a savage has a string of beads around his neck, and 
something in his ears, he is immensely tickled with his 
own beauty. And you laugh at him. But Christians 
are just like him. They have two or three tinkling 
virtues that they put on which cover a part of their 
nakedness, and leave the rest uncovered. — Sermon : 
Beauty. 

You may scout the Yankee as much as you please, 
but it has been that Calviuistically-bred Yankee brain 
that has made the foundations of this government firm 
and secure. It was the Yankee conscience that smote 
the devil of slavery and destroyed it ; and it is the 
Yankee heart that will build schoolhouses all over the 
land, and defend the poor and weak, and make justice 
the stability of our times. — Sermon : Special Divine 
Providence. 

"When barnyard-fowls find a morsel of food, they 
" cluck, cluck, cluck," and let every fowl have a chance ; 
but when dogs find a bit of meat, they grab it, and run 
and hide, that they may have it all to themselves. INIen 
take after dogs in this particular ! — Sermon : The 
Mercifulness of the Bible. 



Oftentimes the difference between hopeful men and 
melancholy men is simply the difference of their diges- 
tion. — Lectures to Young Men : Practical Hints. 



72 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. 

" Miss Palfry, have you seen a man come across here 
this mornin' — a rather big man — a little cast in one eye 
— looks as though he was winkin' at you all the time — 
red hair, wears it long — and has a red handkerchief 
round his neck ? Rides on a gray horse — well, some- 
thing of the size of Cathcart's yonder? " 

" A man with red hair and hawdkerchief ? " 

"Yes." 

" On a gray horse ? " 

" Yes — with a long tail." 

" Let me see — Polly ! — here, Polly ! — have you seen 
a man this mornin' comin' across, with red hair ? " 
Hiram struck in — " With red hair, and white-tail horse ? " 

" About what time ? " 

"How do I know? That's what I want to find out. 
He had a porkmanty behind him, and a green um- 
brella." 

" AVal, I guess he hain't come along yet. Shall I tell 
him any thing if he comes ? " 

" Yes ; tell him that I think he had better stop, when 
he gits where he wants to go to." 

And with that he gave a shai-p cluck, or sort of throat- 
whistle, which every horse understands, and in a moment 
disappeared in the covered bridge. The woman looked 
after him with the slightest possible look of humorous 
vexation. 

"Go 'long, you old fool ! I don't believe he's expectin' 
anybody. Well, I shall learn one of these days not to 



-7 

LA UGHTER. — KNO W LEDGE. — BE A UTY. 73 

believe a word Hiram saj's. Might 'a* known he was 
qiiizzin' — shouldn't wonder if he died laughiu', and 
cracked jokes at his own funeral! " — Norwood. 



Woe be to that man who has lost all power of blossom- 
ing ! Woe be to that man who has come out from under 
the burden and cares of life with no power of singing, of 
being merry, and of gambolling like a boy — not spelling 
it as they spell it in Wall Street, but as they spell it in 
poetry. Blessed is the man who can throw the light and 
radiance of his imagination', of his wit and humor, all 
through his life 1 — Sermox : They have their Reward. 



It would be very absui-d for an owl in an ivy-bush to 
read lectures on optics to an eagle, or for a mole to coun- 
sel a lynx on the sin of sharp-sighteduess. — Lectures 
TO Young IMen : Portrait-Gallery. 



If a man could swing the rainbow as a hammock, and 
sleep in it, how the poet would rejoice in that ! — 
Sermon : Beauty. 

Complaint is often made of ministers that they 
meddle with things they do not understand. I think 
they do, when they preach theology. — Sermon : Sphere 
of the Christian Minister. 



74 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. 

People are very much like fishes. Whales take vast 
quantities of water into their mouths for the sake of the 
animalculse it contains, and then blow out the water, 
while keeping in the food. People do pretty much the 
same. They don't believe half that you say. The part 
that is nutritious they keep, and the rest they let alone. 
— Lectures on Preaching. 



Suppose I should go to God and say, " Lord, be pleased 
to give me salad," he would point to the garden, and say, 
" There is the place to get salad; and, if you are too lazy 
to work for it, you may go without." — Lecture-room 
Talks: Answers to Prayer. 



*' Great sermons," ninety-nine times in a hundred, 
are nuisances. They are like steeples without any bells 
in them ; things stuck up high in the air, serving for 
ornament, attracting observation, but sheltering nobody, 
"warming nobody, helping nobody. — Lectures on Preaching. 



Do you suppose I study musty old books when I want 
to preach ? No, I stuily ■jinii. Wlicn I want to know 
more about the doctrine of depravity, I study you; and I 
have abundant illustrations on every side. — Sermon: 
Sphere of the Christian Minister. 



SCEPTICS. — GRO WTH. — GI VING. — FLIES, lb 

People look upon a man who has said he is a sceptic 
as though he had the small-pox. 

A man has as much right to be a sceptic as he has 
to be sick ; and that is a universal right. He is a man 
who will not eat hay, but wants fresh grass. — Sebmon: 
Concord, not Unison. 



A MAN comes to me, and says, " I understand you have 
been sitting for your portrait." He goes and sees it, and 
comes back and says, " Is that a portrait of you ? Why, 
I understood that the painter was a great artist." — "But," 
I say, " he has not got through with it yet : that is only 
the first stage. It won't be as handsome as I am for six 
or seven sittings." Everybody would understand that. — 
Sekmon : The Personal Injiuence of God. 



I don't think that when I was presented with a book, 
being eight years old, and was told that it would do me 
good as long as I lived, I felt lialf as much gratitude as I 
did when Aunt Bull gave me a doughnut. I understood 
the doughnut. The book was too much for me. — Ser- 
mon : Generosity and Liberality. 



There are two degrees in this art ; viz., F.H. and F.C., 
— fly-hunting and fly-catching. The first is easy, but 
few can have a diploma for the last. — Eyes and Ears. 



76 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST 

And if heaven be a place of propriety ; if it be a place 
in which everybody is regimented ; if it be a place where, 
at stated times, we shall turn and bow one way, and 
then tm-n and bow the other way, and say our prayers, 
and repeat our hymns, — if that be heaven, it is a mechani- 
cal heaven; it is an automaton's heaven ; it is a machine- 
heaven, and a poor one at that. — Sermon: The Name 
of Jesus. 

I STRUCK the horse with a switch, and he broke into a 
canter. Knowing how disagreeable it was to change 
from a canter to a trot, I kept him in a full canter till 
he reached the brook's edge ; and there he stojiped sud- 
denly — but I did not! The liquid argument that fol- 
lowed was one which I never forgot. I rode better the 
third time for my mishap the second time. I never 
needed to ride after anybody after that. — Sermon : The 
Law of Liberty. 

That which is very good for a bug, is very poor for a 
Christian. — Sermon ; Wsing One's Life for Others. 



A TRUE gentleman is different from anybody else, 
even if he is sea-sick ; and if there is a greater test than 
that, 1 do not know what it is I — Sermon : Treasure 
that cannot be Stolen. 



CIRCUMSTANCES. — BIBLE-READING. 77 

During the days when color was a virtue, in a famous 
chui'ch in New York a distinguished merchant had a col- 
ored man in his pew. The presence of that colored man 
in the congregation had the same effect that a lump of 
salt would have in a cup of tea. The whole congrega- 
tion, with an eternity to consider, thought only of the 
colored man in that merchant's pew. And as they went 
out of the church, various persons gathered about the 
merchant, and said, " What possessed you to bring that 
nigger into your pew ? " He whispered and said to 
them, " He is a great planter, and he is rich : he is a mil- 
lionnaire." And then they said, "Introduce us to him ! 
Introduce hiin to usl " — Sermon : Self-Conlrol Possible 
to AIL 

You put your Bible in your book-case. There it 
stands all the week, perhaps. Or, you read it once a 
day, or once a week, as the case may be. And you do it 
very decorously. Your room is still, and your children 
sit around the room in a stiff row. You put on your 
spectacles and read ; and as you read, you lower the key 
of your voice, — for when men want to be religious, they 
always take a solemn note, — and you read all the way 
through the chapter, and are like a blind man walking 
along a road where there are all sorts of flowers on both 
sides, never seeing a single one. Men read thus, and feel 
a great deal better because they have read the Bible to 
their family ! — Sermon : The Beauty of Moral Qualities. 



u. 



78 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. 

I WILL endeavor to keep peace with every living thing 
that God doth daily nourish, and year by year renew. 

Postscript. — I except mosquitoes; also, cockroaches; 
also, aphides on my flowers ; also, the house-spiders ; and 
the rats, of course ; and other people's cats, and vagrant 
dogs; and hawks that come after my chickens; and 
marmots that desolate my cabbage-patch. In short, like 
most others, I am a peace-man, except when I wish to 
fight. — Stak Papers : Living Languages. 



They baptize infants to efface original sin, aboriginal 
sin, by which they mean the smut that comes down 
through life from rubbing against Adam. — Sermon: 
Adam and Christ. 



Almost without a single exception, new halls and old 
ones are unventilated. The committee will point you to 
an auger-hole in some corner of the ceiling, and tell you 
that arrangements have been made for ventilation I You 
might as well insert a goose-quill in a dam to supply all 
Lowell with water for its mills ! — Eyes and Ears. 



An earthquake cannot take place in India that is not 
felt here, morally speaking. Ireland is as if within our 
national borders — and the greater part of it is. — 
Baptist Union : After-dinner Speech. 



UNCONSCIOUS CHRISTIANS. — EGGS. 79 

My watch stops. Something is broken in it. I take 
it to the watch-maker, and he puts in a new mainspring. 
And then it does not go, perhaps ; but he gives it a little 
turning shake, and it couimences ticking and keeping 
time. 

I know many persons who have a mainspring in them, 
and have been wound up, for that matter, but who have 
not been shaken yet ! And there they are. If some- 
body would only take them up and whirl them round a 
few times, and say to them, " You are Christians; tick! 
tick!" they would commence keeping time and go on 
keeping time. — Lecture-room Talks : Answers to 
Prayer. 

Men in the ordinary stage are like robins' eggs in the 
nest: you cannot feed them. Let the robin sit on them 
a little while, and by and by there will be nothing but 
four mouths ; and as fast as you put in worms, they will 
gulp them. To educate in the cold and natural state is 
just like feeding eggs. Warm them, and give them life, 
and they will eat. — Lectures on Preaching, 



I THINK it would be a very wholesome thing in a min- 
ister's life, if once in a while, upon finding that he was 
not making much of a sermon, he should frankly confess 
it, and say, "Brethren, we will sing." — Lectures on 
Preaching. 



80 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. 

When we children used to discuss the subject, Charles 
insisted that the Lord could not do every thing, — for 
instance, that he could not made a sheet of paper with 
only one side to it ! — Sermon : Pictures of Truth. 



Every one properly born and well brought up knows 
that hens' nests are fortuitous, and are always happening 
in the most sui'prising manner, and in the most unex- 
pected places. And though you bring all your great 
human brain to bear upon the matter, a silly old hen will 
tuck away a dozen eggs right under your eyes, and will 
walk forth daily after each instalment with a most domes- 
tic air and tone of taunting, saying, as j^lain as inarticulate 
sounds can proclaim it, " I've laid an egg ! I've laid an 
egg I I've laid another ! You can't find it ! You won't 
find it! I know you won't!" And sure enough we 
can't find it, and don't find it, until, after a due time, the 
gratified old fuss leads forth all her eggs with infinite 
duckings responsive to endless peepings 1 — Eyes and 
Ears. 

When a child says, " Will God give me any thing I 
ask him for ? " and the mother says, " Yes," he says, 
"Then I am going to ask him to give me a big apple." 
And men pray in like manner, asking God for what they 
want, and he answers by giving them what they ought to 
want. — Sermon : Tlie Sympathy of Christ. 



PLAIN PREACHING. — SUCCESS. — CATS. 81 

Some justify the obscurities of their style, saying that 
it is a good practice for men to be obliged to dig for the 
ideas which they get. But I submit to you that working 
on Sunday is not proper for ordinary people in church ; 
and obliging your parishioners to dig and delve for 
ideas in your sermons, is making them do the very work 
you are paid a salary to do for them. — Lectures on 
Preaching. 

Coming to a fortunate point and striking out an illus- 
tration which arouses and interests them, — leave the 
ti'ack of your argument, and never mind what becomes of 
your elaborate sermon, and you will see the heavy and 
uninterested eyes lighting up again. "But," you say, 
"that will make my sermon unsymmetrical." Well, 
■were you called to preach for the sake of the salvation 
of sermons ? Just follow the stream, and use the bait 
they are biting at, and take no heed of your sermon. — ■ 
Lectures on Preaching. 



I HAVE known men who have watched after professors 
of religion. I have a cat in the country, that, knowing 
that there is a rat in the drain, will lie crouched in the 
grass for six hours together, waiting for that rat to come 
out. And I know people who watch at doors where 
Christians are to come out, just as patiently, and with 
just as much humanity ! — Skrmon : Counting the Cost. 



82 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

The majority of men want a priesthood. Say as 
much as you please about the objections of men to being 
priest-ridden: if they do not want to be priest-ridden, 
they want a priest to ride. Men want some one to fix 
things for them. People like to eat, but they don't like 
to cook. So men want a church that will settle their 
religion for them, and they revile those churches that do 
not do it. — Sermon : Bible Precepts to be Spiritually 
Interpreted. 

" They come to college to read all them books? I don't 
wonder it takes 'em four years. Do you s'pose Barton 
has got all this inside of him ? " 

" Very likely," said Hiram : " but it's mighty poor feed, 
I should think ; for the fellers that read most git the 
leanest." 

" Do you know which end they begin at ? " said 
Tonnny, with a curious awe. 

" Wal," said Hiram, " I've been here befoi'e, but I 
never saw many folks a readin' here. I guess the fellers 
play ball pretty much all summer, and read winters." — 
NoiiwoOD : Leacing College. 



Men have gone into caves to get rid of pride, but they 
have not got rid of it. If a turtle creeps into a hole, 
he is a turtle still. — Sermon : Physical Uinderances in 
Spiritual Life. 



SELFISHNESS. — A NXIE TY. — SEL F-HELP. 83 

Men still believe that a modified amount of stinginess 
is good policy. Men still believe that men must look out 
for themselves, or nobody will look out for them ; and 
that if other people get in their way, they must take the 
consequences. Men conduct business just as a locomotive 
makes journeys. It is an immense iron machine, going 
at a terrific rate ; and if any thing gets on the track, it 
is lis lookout, and not the locomotive's. — Seumon : Scope 
and Function of a Christian Life. 



Imagine a short man dissatisfied with his shortness, 
trying to grow tall by fretting about it, ambitiously swell- 
ing, and saying, " I am but five feet high : how on earth 
shall I get to be six feet? " Will it do any good? Is 
there any thing more preposterous? There is no relation 
between anxiety and the result which you seek to obtain. 
— Sermon: Evils of Anxious Forethought. 



Household government is to teach the child how to 
take care of himself ; but he will not learn how to take 
care of himself' if he is done up in brown paper and tied 
with a string ! If a child is to do any thing, he must be 
trusted, and allowed to make mistakes. The world was 
made to make mistakes in. The place where they do 
not make mistakes is some way distant. — Sermon : 
Motives of Action. 



84 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. 

If we can trace our lineage back to Alfred, or along 
some line of illustrious men, how noble we think that ! 
But when Mr. Darwin suggests tiuit we should trace our 
pedigree the other way, we are not so anxious to do it — 
though I think in many respects it would be easier 1 
Disguise it as you will, the points in which we are alike 
are more in the animal direction than in any other. — 
Sermon : The Unity of Men. 



To your own INIaster you stand or fall. You might sit 
at the Lord's table with a pirate on one side of you, and 
a murderer on the other, and it would be no testimony 
that you believed in piracy or murder. It would simply 
be a testimony that you sought Christ for yourself. The 
Church of England has been thrown into a nine-days' hor- 
ror because a Socinian scholar was allowed to sit at table. 
They were not lords, giving entertainments to their peers : 
they were themselves but miserable sinners asking God's 
grace among other sinners equally miserable. — Sermon : 
. Tlie Liberty of the Gospel. 



Money, in the hands of one or two men, is like a dung- 
heap in a barn-yard. So long as it lies in a mass, it does 
no good ; but if it was only spread out evenly on the 
land, how every thing would grow 1 — Sermon : The 
Love of Money. 



MONEY. — AGNOSTICS. — LIFE. — FASTING. 85 

Wealth unused is wealth that is dead. Unused wealth 
is of no more use to a community than are the men that 
lie in mausoleums a thousand years old — the dust of the 
sepulchre. Money is like powder : it has no po\ver until 
it is set off. — Sermon : Haste to be Rich. 



When a child is first born, what is it but a pulpy, 
■warm little bit of animal, wrapped up in flannel ? — with- 
out original righteousness, without original orthodoxy, 
without original heterodoxy, without original arithmetic, 
witliout original rhetoric, without original any thing, 
though the organs are there. The most perfect know- 
nothing in the world is that of the cradle, agnostic from 
the beginning. — Sermon : Adam and Christ. 



I THINK that one reason why angels never go to 
theatres is that there is no theatre that has such comedies 
as human life. There are buffoons, there are comedians, 
innumerable, high and low, going through the most 
grotesque plays, — and ti-agedies, alas ! — Sermon : Evils 
of Anxious Forethought. 



Some ministers starve themselves till they have 
scarcely the substance of a mosquito, and then think 
they are sacred. — Sermon : Concord, not Unison. 



86 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

An unexploded torpedo is peaceable, but we should 
not consider it an implement of peace. It has every- 
thing ready for an explosion when it is touched off. — 
Sekmon : Peaceable Living. 



I THINK I can get angry as quick as anybody : I do 
not tliink I am deficient in that Christian grace. But I 
never saw the man yet whom I would not have compas- 
sion for, after I had had time to think, and to couj^le him 
with his own trials, and reflect where he came from, who 
educated him, what sort of a tussle he had had in life, 
and what temptations and provocations he had been 
subjected to. — Sekmon: Peaceable Living. 



The old Greeks said that a man had two ears and one 
mouth, that he might hear twice and speak once; and 
there is a great deal of good sense in it. You will find 
that if you will simply hold your peace, you will pass 
over nine out of ten of the provocations of life. — 
Sermon : Peaceable Living. 



There are more quarrels smotliercd by just shutting 
your mouth, and holding it shut, than by all the wisdom 
in the world. — Sekmon : Peaceable Living. 



TOM 31 Y TAFT ON BABIES. — DEVILS. 87 

"Parson Buell, it's the unaccountablest thing what 
the Lord sends children into tliis world for, considerin' 
what sort of a place 'tis, and what a time folks have in 
gettiu' thro' it. Lord ! They die off like apple-blossoms, 
half on 'em, afore they're bigger'n mice. And the rest of 
'em have a hard time gittiu' grown; and when you've got 
'em growed, half the folks are paddling round as if they 
didn't exactly know what they come on airth for; and 
nobody can tell 'em, for that matter. I never see babies 
but 1 think how we used to have birds come aboard ship, 
way out to sea — land-birds, and so tired, poor little things, 
and hungry ! You could go up to 'em, and take 'em in 
your hand, and they turned up their bright eyes with 
such a piteous look at you, as if they had come from ever 
so far, and lost their way, and didn't know where they 
were. Wall, that's about what I think of babies. "What 
do they come off to this 'ere world for ? Why don't they 
stay where they're well off ? " — Norwood : Tommy Taft. 



No man likes to have the devil cast out of him. 
There is as much squealing, and running down hill, and 
pitching into the sea now, as there was in the time of 
our Saviour. And you will take notice, that, when 
passions come out of men, they generally take the form 
of hogs. It is the lower passions, it is the animal, after 
all that is dispossessed; and that the animal resists. — 
Sermon : TJie Beauli/ of Moral Qualities. 



88 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. 

I DO not preach every thing that I tliink. Why do I 
not ? Because I do not know that I believe it yet. There 
is nothing in this world that requires such long seasoning 
and ripening as new thoughts. JNIen seem to think that 
the pulpit ought to be like an apple-press where greedy 
boys run, and each sticks his straw into the vat, and 
sucks the unfermented juice. The farmer would say to 
the boys, "No: let the juice stand, and let the impurities 
be worked off ; and then, in six or eight months, you will 
see the real, true cider, or wine of the apples." And so 
it is with truth. — Sermon : The Liberty of ike Gosjjel. 



There are some children that really seem born in tlie 
wrong world, they are so good ; but as a general rule, 
almost all saints among children die early. They do 
not hold out a great while. If they live, they are not 
saints; and if they are saints, they do not live, for the 
most part. — Sermon : The Riches of God. 



There are some men who have to promote piety by 
having a prayer for every hour. If any man really 
requires such regularity and frequency of prayer, if 
he is a multiplication table with the skin pulled over it, 
let him pray so. It is his liberty, and why do you rail 
at it ? But if a man is made as I am, he could not do 
it. — Sermon : 2'he Nature of Liberty. 



LAND-FO VERTY. — DANGER. — SIIALLO WS. 89 

What would it avail me, if I owned a section of land 
ten miles wide through to the Pacific Ocean? How 
much of it could I cultivate, or even look at? What 
could I do with it, if I had it? There is such a thing 
as being made poor by abundance. And yet, men go 
on seeking wealth with an insane ambition. — Sermon : 
Thoughts of Death. 



Being born is dangerous enough. And it is danger- 
ous to live. It is more and more dangerous to live as 
you grow and develop. It is dangerous to read, and it 
is dangerous not to read. It is dangerous to use your 
eyes, and it is dangerous not to use them. It is danger- 
ous not to believe enough, and it is dangerous to believe 
too much. Men are but stumbling machines. Things 
never go in right lines and symmetries. Men grope, and 
the world gropes, in matters that touch the deep founda- 
tions of happiness. And among the mysteries of time 
is the fact that men are left with all the responsibilities 
and all the risks of exploration, with its mistakes, its 
over - actions, and its under - actions. — Sermon: The 
Inspiration of Scripture. 



Did you ever see a brook only an inch deep that 
could have waves twenty feet high? If a man is shal- 
low enough, he will not be deeply moved. — Sermon: 
God 's Workmanship in Man. 



90 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

Of all surgery in the world, that which is most skilful, 
that which is learned soonest, and that which needs the 
least skill, is the surgery by which you can make a lance 
out of your tongue, with which to gash and sear men. — 
Sermon: Use of the Tongue. 



The world has too much to do to think about fools; 
and, therefore, men who spend their lives in imposing 
themselves upon their fellow-men, when tliey die, die 
thoroughly, — die all through, and are forgotten. — 
Sermon : Earthly Immortality. 



If you must vocalize, vocalize; bl^t there is not a man 
that shouts " Hallelujah I " who feels more than the man 
that cannot shout, because he feels so much. — Sermon : 
Religious Fervor. 

Does a philosopher think that he is the father of 
philosophy? He is the child of it. It made him in- 
stead of his making it. — Sermon : The Power of God's 
Truth. 

Gluttony and intemperance need no help. They go 
without crutches in this world, though they bring men 
to crutches very speedily. — Sermon : The Right and 
the Wrong Way of Giving Pleasure. 



DAVID. — COTTON MATHER. — CHRISTIANS. 91 

Some men say that the Psalms of David are not in- 
spired. 1 will not now dispute whether they are inspired 
or not ; but I know that no other such hymnals ever 
went sounding on through three thousand years of the 
world's history, developing power and sweetness as 
they went. They sang, and taught the world to sing. 
If they are not inspired, they have an admirably good 
substitute for inspiration. — Sermon : The Inspiration of 
Scripture. 

One of the Mathers — Cotton IMather, I think it was 
— had an almost ridiculous way of spiritualizing every 
thing he saw. When he was walking along the street, 
if he saw a tall man, he would say, " May he be tall in 
grace ! " If he saw a short man, he would say, " May he 
be short in sin ! " There was something queer in the 
habit as he carried it out ; but in the idea of giving to 
every common event a spiritual suggestion, there was 
nothing queer. It was pre-eminently wise. — Lecture- 
room Talks : Realization of ChrisCs Presence. 



I NEVER make a mistake in judging of flowers. I 
never smell of a nettle or a thistle thinking it is a 
honeysuckle. I never go astray in autumn in regard 
to my grape-vine. Are Christians of such a disposition 
that you can mark them sure? — Sermon: '■^ My Yoke is 
Easy." 



92 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. 

A NEST is good for a robin while it is an egg, but it 
is bad for a robin when it has got wings. It is a poor 
place to fly in, but it is a good place to be hatched in. 
Institutions always dig their own graves if they are 
good for any thing. In an educatory institution that 
is good for any thing, men become larger than the 
institution. — Sermon : The Perfect Manhood. 



Suppose I should invite an Englishman to my house, 
and, as soon as he had taken his seat, should begin on 
him, and say, by way of entertaining him, " Do you, 
sir, think that a queen is as good as a president? Do 
not you think that a monarchy is about as good as any 
government on the face of the earth?" That which 
we would scorn to do in the family, that which we 
would consider a breach of politeness in the household, 
men are perpetually doing in churches and assemblies 
of Christian men ; and, in doing it, they think they 
are serving God, and obeying their own consciences ! — 
Sermon : Tlie Apostolic Theory of Preaching. 



You must learn to be good haters — but not of men. 
That is not the text. You do not need any thing to in- 
struct you on that point. You are too good in that 
already ! You are to abhor evil. — Sermon : Abhorrence 
of Evil. 



CHARITY. — FRENCH ART. — HYMNS. 93 

There is a good deal of benevolence, but it does not 
get around much. It stays at home for the most part, 
and does not become acquainted with its neighbors. — 
Sermon : Unprojilahle Servants. 



I Ai\r heartily tired of French nakedness. Their sec- 
ond-rate painters seem to abhor nothing so much as linen. 
I think myself not to be fastidious in such things. I am 
willing always to see the liuman form sculptured or 
painted when it seems to subserve a good purpose. If it 
be natural that it should under such and such circum- 
stances be disrobed, I do not turn away from it, provided 
the sentiment is noble, and predominates to such a degree 
as to make the condition of the figure a secondary and 
scarcely perceived affair. But ... I am sick of naked 
harems. The Turk refuses a sight of his women, even 
when di'essed. The French are courteous to the other 
extreme. I could not help feeling, at length, and not 
alone of this gallery, that a yard of linen would be, of 
itself, almost an object of beauty ; and quite original, 
too, as an idea of art, among a certain class of French 
painters. — Star Papers : Gallery of the Luxembourg. 



A THOUSAND sermons can't put down heresy so fast 
as a hundred hymns. — Remarks at the Silver Weddinc], 
Plymouth Church, Oct. 10, 1872. 



94 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. 

The man who makes a bargain with you to-morrow 
will know whether you are converted or not. When a 
man is converted, he is converted into benevolence. No 
man was ever converted into stinginess. — Sermon: 
Aims and Methods of Christian Life. 



I HONOR a woman who comes to me, when I call at 
her house, in just the dress that is suited to the work 
which she is doing. If I am swallowed up in an abyss 
of plush in the parlor three-quarters of an hour waiting, 
that she may come down with her Sunday suit on, I do 
not thank her. If, on the contrary, I call at a house, 
and the woman is kneading bread, and she comes to 
me saying, " It is impossible, sir, but that I must see 
you as I am," that is just the way I am glad to see 
her. — Seriion: The True Law of the Household. 



Clothes that are a very good fit for children when 
they are six years old, are a very bad fit when they are 
sixteen, and must be let out, or they will split out in 
every direction. — Sermon: Individual Responsibility. 



The Lord's garment is large enough to cover all sects, 
and to leave room for nations to camp under it besides. — 
Sermon: Moral Theory of Civil Liberty. 



SnUT YOUR MOUTH. — SEX. 95 

Wk heard a lad, in anger, use this expression to an- 
other. It was not very bad advice, though given some- 
what roughly. 

When we hear some of our mincing misses singing, 
now away up, and now away down, tossing their heads, 
and rolling their eyes, we think, Well, miss, if you knew 
what folks thought of you, you'd shut your mouth. 

We have seen many men ruined because they did not 
know how to shut their mouth when tempted to say " Yes," 
to a bad business. 

When we see a man standing before the bar just ready 
to drink, we think, Ah, you fine fellow I if you will not 
keep your mouth shut befoi-e that bar, you will, by and 
by, find yourself before a Bar where it will be shut tight 
enough. 

When we hear a fine lady scolding till every room 
rings; or tattling from house to house; or scandal- 
mongering, — we think, Ah, my lady ! with all your 
schooling, you never learned to shut your mouth. — Fruits, 
Flowers, and Farming. 



A woman's nature will never be changed. Men might 
spin and churn, and knit and sew and cook, and rock the 
cradle, for a hundred generations, and not be women. 
And woman will not become man by external occupa- 
tions. God's colors do not wash out. Sex is dyed in 
the wool. — Sermon : Thaiiksgicing. 



96 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. 

Whex, during the great disaster at New Hamburg, 
men were rushing into crowds to rescue from tlie wrecked 
cars those that were in them, or to drag from the water 
those who had been thrown into it, do you suppose it was 
necessary for them to stop and say, " Ai-e you a Rej^ubli- 
oan, or are you a Democrat? — Because I am not going to 
be seen working alongside of a man not of my political 
belief, and have people suppose that I indorse all his 
abominable political doctrines " ? Would not that have 
been monstrous ? And yet, in Brooklyn, within my 
time, for years and years, the Sunday schools of the 
Unitarian churches were not allowed to walk in proces- 
sion with the Sunday schools of the orthodox chui'ches 
on annivei'sary days ; and the Unitarian churches had to 
draw ofE their schools, and form processions on other days, 
because it was feared that the little orthodox children 
would catch some heresy from the little Unitarian chil- 
dren if they were allowed to walk with them in the 
streets ! Over the scene, Christ was sad, and the Devil 
was glad! — SeRiMON : The Liberty of the Gospel. 



The trouble is, people are hungry in the stomach, and 
not in the head. People should be hungry with the eye 
and the ear as well as with the mouth. If all a man's 
necessaries of life go in at the port-hole of the stomach, 
it is a bad sign. — Lectures to Young Men : Practical 
Hints. 



THE BIBLE. — SECTARIANISM. — OATHS. 97 

The Bible is like a telescope. If a man looks through 
his telescope, then he sees worlds beyond ; but if he 
looks at his telescope, then he does not see any thing but 
tliat. — Sermon : The Wmj of Coming to Christ. 



Yea, and I believe that God will open the minds of the 
Brooklyn Sunday-school Union so that the children of 
the Universalist Sunday school will parade with the other 
Sunday-school children on Anniversary Day. [Applause.] 
When that last device of the Devil, that concentration of 
meanness, the jealousy or hatred of sectionalism, is swept 
away, I will throw up my cap in the street, yea, in the 
church, and shout with joy. That day is coming ; and 
you Baptist, you Congregationalist, you Episcopalian, you 
Catholic, and all the other denominations, will be united 
spiritually. Christian brothers, I would not take away 
one inch from the depth of your baptistery. I'd just as 
lief you stay a Baptist until the end of time, and only ask 
that the Lord make you see that others who differ from 
you are lovers of Christ working in a different way, and 
that God is love. — After-dinner Speech, Baptist Union. 



If there were such a thing as a silent oath ; if there 
were such a thing as dry swearing ; if a man swore under 
his handkerchief, — there would be less to be repre. 
bended. — Lectures to Young Men : Profane Swearing 



98 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. 

When a young physiologist came with great zeal to 
Cuvier, and said that he had discovered a new muscle in 
the frog, the old naturalist waved him off kindly, and 
said, " Come to me again in ten years." He never came. 
Further investigation proved to him that he had not 
found a new muscle. — Sermon : Reason in Religion. 



How many men do we find, who, when they go into old 
age, and retire from active business, are exactly like a man 
who has carried witli him all his days a knife with a 
hundred blades, but has only opened one, and that the 
big blade ! — Lectuues to Young Men : Happiness. 



Any thing is wise and useful that shall keep our 
thoughts quietly busy with outward things. Thoughts 
that strike in ai-e full of mischief. They gnaw at our 
heart. They breed sorrow and sickness. Man is the 
highest study of man, doubtless ; but each one had better 
study some other man. — Star Papers : A Heart in 
Little Things. 

A MAN who plants lettuce may plant it to-day, may 
to-morrow see that it has sprouted, and may in two or 
three days eat it. But it is only lettuce. A man who 
plants acorns does not run out the next morning to see 
what they have done. — Sermon : Patience. 



WHO PAYS. — IDEAS. — SINGING. 99 

Good men, you know, pay all the taxes of bad men. 
Virtuous men pay the state bills of dissipated men. 
Patriotic men pay all the war bills of unpatriotic 
men. Citizens that stay at home pay the expenses of 
politicians that go racketing about the country, and do 
nothing but mischief. — Sermon: The Strong to Bear 
with the Weak. 

When a physician has a little practice, he goes on 
foot ; when he has a little more, he buys a horse ; when 
he has still more, he buys two horses ; but when he has 
a large practice, he must have three horses ; and when 
he has an excessively large practice, he gets four, five, 
six, or eight horses. And the larger the number of 
horses that he has in his stable, the less he is obliged to 
ride each one. And so it is with ideas. If a man has but 
very few ideas, he rides one : if he has more, he rides 
two. And the larger his stable is, the more ideas he has. 
And the consequence is, he rides each one only a pi'opor- 
tional part of the time. — Sermon : The Right and the 
Wrong Way of Giving Pleasure. 



We are commanded to sing with understanding ; and 
yet, if we did, four hundred and ninety-five out of five 
hundred pieces of music that are published for singing 
would have to go to the dirt. — Sermon : The Right and 
the Wrong Way of Giving Pleasure. 



100 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

A CREED is a good thing to teach a congregation by, 
and to catechise claildren by. It is good to lay down 
general points of belief around which a congregation may 
gather. But a creed is not a whip of scorpions by whicli 
we are to lash each other's backs. — Sekmon : The 
Apostolic Theory of Preaching. 



Did you ever know a person to fall in love with another 
philosopliically? Is not philosophy the last thing that 
has to do with it ? Do not men fall in love by the heart, 
if at all ? They never fall in love head-first, but always 
heart-first, if the love is good for any thing. — Sermon : 
The Way of Coming to Christ. 



There ai-e those that are instructed in the necessity of 
cross-bearing, who, that they may not be without a cross, 
make up little crosses, and are caref ui that they are made 
not only small, but of light timber. Their crosses are 
the hermit's shell, like the old pilgrim's scallop which 
was worn on the shoulder. — Sermon : Bearing, but not 
Overborne. 



You might as well try to dissolve a slate roof by allow- 
ing the rain to fall on it, as to attempt to affect some 
people through the motive of fear. — Sermon : Social 
Obstacles to Religion. 



HOSPITALS. — GETTING SHARP. — SYMPATHY. 101 

A MAN says, " I am full of diseases from head to foot ; 
and as soon as I get cured of them, I am going into a 
hospital." What are you going into a hospital for 
when you are cured ? 

The Church is a hospital where men may be cured. 
The Church is a bulwark tliat hides men from the stroke 
of battle. The Church is a schoolhouse. It is a father's 
house or a brother's house. — Sekmon : Weak Hours. 



Any man's grindstone is good enough to grind you 
on: any man's shop is good enough to make you in. 
— Sekmon : The Perfect Manhood. 



I DO not blame you so severely, because you have been 
so badly brought up. You have been studying cate- 
chisms and creeds so that you have had no time to study 
conduct. You have been so busy thinking about church 
machinery that you have not had much time to think 
about Christian spirit and life. You have studied the 
body until you have forgotten that there is such a thing 
as the soul. — Sekmon : Christian Sympathy. 



There is but one place where a man can bear a boil, 
and that is on his neighbor ! — Sekmon : Bearinf/, but 
not Overborne. 



102 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

There are many men who are far better than their 
reputations. There are many men who have the reputa- 
tion of being stingy and cruel, and who will wring your 
neck in a strife or an emergency, but who, at another 
time, and when they are in a different vein, would sit by 
you night and day, and would not spare their bodies nor 
their wealth in ministering to you. They would kill you 
on one side, and save you on the other. — Sermon : The 
Hidden Life. 

Have you never seen ants swarm over the rosy flower- 
buds of the opening peony ? How they caress it I How 
nimble are their thousand tickling feet as round and 
round the circular buds they go uursingly ! Is it that 
ants love flowers ? No ! It is that they may lick up the 
sugary secretion which exudes from the flower-bud. And 
so there may be many that serve men, not because they 
love them, but because they fain would suck their sub- 
stance out of them. — Sermon : The Right and the Wrong 
Way of Giving Pleasure. 



The most worthless of all persons are those IDy-handed 
boys who have been brought up without being taught to 
do any thing for themselves. We know this is so, and 
recognize it in social matters; but it is precisely Avhat 
many churches attempt to do by men. — Sermon: In 
Christian Life. 



SCULPINS. — STOICISM. — DEATH. 103 

There is a fish called sculpin. Nine-tenths of it are 

mouth, and one-tenth body, as I recollect it when a boy. 

Its chief business, apparently, consists in eating every 

"ng. And after it has eaten, nothing comes of it. It 

,s a big tail to propel itself with, a big head, a big 

lOuth, and a very active stomach with which it does the 

vork of digestion quickly. It is a do-nothing, gorman- 

fiizing fish. And there are sculpin men. — Sekmon : 

iRemnants. 

Jt used to be a matter of pride in school for us boys 
to f^ake punishment bravely. When I had thrown paper- 
balLs, and missed the master (to my great regret), and I 
Tas called up, and, holding out my hand, I took the 
strokes of the rattan, twenty, twenty-five, thii'ty of them, 
and took them without flinching, like an Indian, did I 
not know that all the boys behind me were watching, 
and saying, " Bravo I there's a hero for you "? and did I 
not go back to my seat triumphing in my iniquity ? — 
Sermon : Other Men's Failings. 



There is something that touches the imagination of 
people in the thought of a minister's dropping down 
dead in the pulpit ; but I do not think I should be any 
nearer heaven if I died in my pulpit, than if I died on 
my farm, or on a railroad-car, or on a vessel at sea. — 
Sermon : In Christian Life. 




BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 



I LIKE culture so long as it is humble, so long as it 
I'^gards itself as the servant of the truth. But I love the 
heart; and I would rather hear an old cracked voice, 
feeble, with many gaps, singing honestly with tears t] 
songs of Zion, than hear the finest cantatrice that evt. 
enraptured the most cultivated congregation. — Sekmon 
The Social Principle. 



Men must set their watch at the time that the enemj. 
is accustomed to come. Indians usually make their atta^j^ 
at three or four o'clock in the morning, when men sl.:lg 
soundest ; and that is the time to watch against ludir j-^g 
There is no use in doing it at ten o'clock iu the mon^jj^. 
— Sermon : Wutchfulness. 



Here is a man that says, " I guard myself against 
stinginess." Bless his dear soul! he never had a feeling 
of stinginess in all his life. His trouble has always been 
looseness. He never could keep any thing. — Sekmon : 
The Nature and Sources of Temptation. 



A MAN may put yeast into a measure of meal, but God 
never puts religion into a man. Religion is nothing but 
the way in which men think, plan, act, and continue to 
act. — Sermon : In Christian Life. 



BROAD CnURCn. — NATURAL GIFTS. 105 

An Episcopalian ? Yes, I am. I am a Presbyterian 
too ; and I am a Methodist, and a Baptist, and a Sweden- 
borgian. I am every thing that has any good in it. — 
Sermon : Contentment in All Things. 



A MAN, •who, having no disposition to talk, and no 
temptation to talk, manages his tongue, is the man who 
shakes his head at careless people, and is proud to say 
that he has taken good care of his tongue, and does not 
often sin in that way. God made your tongue heavy, 
and that is the reason that it does not wag. It is not 
because you have a special virtue, but because you avail 
yourself of a natural peculiarity. And you pride your- 
self upon that. — Sermon : Watchfulness. 



There are men who own a thousand acres of land, — 
in their soul, — and have but a quarter of an acre of it 
under cultivation. — Sermon: Tlie Hidden Life. 



Show me a saint that is truly a saint, and I will show 
you a saint that is gently, cheerfullj^, mildly, sweetly a 
saint. In other words, as fruit is very sour when it is 
green, so are Christians ; and as fruit when it ripens 
is sweet, so are Christians. — Sermon : The Peace of 
God. 



106 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. 

In the Western country, where they tole game, they 
build enclosures for wild-turkeys, and strew grain under 
the rails, along a deep trench dug for the purpose ; and 
the turkeys, with their heads down, pick up tlie grain, 
and, without suspecting their danger, go into the trap 
that is set for them. It is the nature of a turkey, when 
he is caught, to carry his head high. He never will stoop 
except when he is feeding. Being in the enclosure, as he 
will not lower his head, and as he cannot rise on the wing 
unless he has running-ground, he cannot escape. That 
is just the way young men are caught. They go along 
feeding, feeding, feeding, carrying their head low, and 
creeping into the enclosure ; and then, being proud, and 
carrying their head high, they cannot escape, and are 
destroyed. 

"There is a way which seeraeth right to a man ; but the 
end thereof are the ways of death." 

— Sermon : Forelookings. 



To conscience so perverted, how sweet are the passages 
of Scripture like " Contend earnestly for the faith that 
once was delivered to the saints." If there is any fight- 
ing to be done. Conscience is there, and wants to have 
a hand in it. Conscience has persecuted and turmoiled 
the world. "Without it the world is but a den of 
beasts ; and with it perverted, scarcely any better. — 
Sermon : A Slmbj of Meekness. 



SOUL-POVERTY. — EMOTION. — THE ROMANS. 107 

You cannot make true happiness and leave the soul 
out. An ox isn't happy because he has a grand prairie 
to feed on. He only can enjoy that which he has, 
mouthful by mouthful, right down under his feet. No 
reasoning for him, no poetry for him, uo music for him, 
no meditation on the stars for him. A mouthful and 
a good swallow are all that he knows any thing about 
for the time being. — Sermon : Outward Prosperity and 
Inward Poverty. 

The true test in religion is not how impressionable one 
is. I put an iEolian harp in my window. The evening 
breeze, having nothing to do, and finding the harp in the 
window, courts it, and an interchange of sweet sounds 
goes on. I take a crowbar and put that in the window. 
The same wind sweeps over it, but it does not sing. Why 
did the harp sing? For no reason except that its nature 
was impressionable. It put forth no volition. There 
was no merit in what it did. Why did not the crowbar 
sing? Because it was a crowbar. — Sermon: Fact and 
Fancy. 

He does not like to play for money; but the company 
that he is in do it, and he waives his objections. He acts 
on the principle that Among Romans, one must do as the 
Romans do — a maxim which only needs a little extension 
to make it read, Among devils, one must do as the devils do ! 
— Sermon: Forelookings. 



108 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. 

I HAVE been taught a good deal that meditation is a 
Christian excellence — and so it is; but meditation is 
largely a running of the mind-mill ; and certainly it does 
not do any good to run the mill when there is no grist in 
it; and yet, thousands " meditate " when they have noth- 
ing to meditate on. Indeed, the great majority of men 
are unable to supply themselves with food for continuous 
reflection. — Sermon : Fact and Fancy. 



Surely, it is a great deal to avoid wrong-doing ; but 
what would you account that husbandry to be worth 
which succeeded only in keeping down weeds? A man 
goes on ploughing and ploughing, harrowing and harrow- 
ing, hoeing and hoeing ; and he rejoices, as July comes on, 
saying, " There is not a weed on my farm — not a weed." 
Round and round he goes, looking into every corner, and 
under every hedge, to spy out any weeds that may have 
been left; and he says, " Not one weed shall grow on this 
farm." But where is thy corn, O farmer? " I have no 
corn." Where is thy wheat ? "I have no wheat." 
AMiere are thy fruits ? "I have no fruits." What liast 
thou ? No weeds ! — Sermon : All-sidedness in Christian 
Life. 

"Rejoice in the Lord alway." I will defy anybody 
to do it, if he were such a God as was taught me when I 
was a boy. — Sermon : Christianity in Practice. 



EFFECTIVENESS.— SENTIMENT. 109 

Abstract principles are like rivers in the wilderness, 
flowing night and day with power, but turning no mill. 
They come from the sea, they fall on the mountain, they 
run down through their channels back to the sea. Round 
and round they go in this perpetual circuit, doing nothing 
until civilization stops the water, and pours it over the 
wheel, and says, " Work for your living." Then these 
forces begin to be productive. — Sermon : How goes the 

Battle ? 

It has been said that everybody in the world is either 
a Platonist or an Aristotelian — Tlato standing for ideal 
philosophy, and Aristotle for the real and practical. 
Everybody tends, it is said, to follow one or the other. 
No: the perfect man unites them both, and is at once 
Aristotelian and Platonist. His feet standing on solid 
facts, his head goes philosophizing, and his heart is the 
balance between them. — Sermon; Fact and Fancy. 



It is said by religious technicalists of our day that this 
preaching religion as a power rather than as a doctrine 
is a sentimental philanthropy instead of a Gospel. What 
was it, then, that the angels sang when they announced 
the coming of Christ ? 

" Peace on earth, gooil will to men." 

The old theologue turns round, and says, " Go back 
to heaven, you sentimental singers 1 " — Sermon : How 
goes the Battle f 



110 BEECUER AS A HUMORIST. 

Men look back and say, " Ha, ha ! you pretend to be 
the descendants of apes and monkeys." I care not; 
whatever may be found out either by probability or 
certainty in the past, forgetting the things that lie behind, 
I press forward toward the prize of my high calling in 
Christ Jesus. I am not, at my stage, either a monkey or 
an ape, whatever my ancestors far back may have' been. 
I do not care if they swung their tails in the woods, or 
hung by the branches. That does not concern me. I 
am far on the march beyond that, on toward God, and 
have symptoms of God in me, and the hope of eternal 
life through the all-conquering power of divine love. 
"Whatever may have been the origin of the human race, 
that is the destiny ; and those who by faith and patience 
go on unfolding shall bear the precious fruit in heaven. — 
SeumOX : Tlie Highest Things. 



The holders of this theory declare that, by reason of 
Adam's fall, men lost all communion with God, not only, 
but all power of righteousness. It is said that they are 
free to choose, but they were paralyzed so they could not 
choose righteousness : they were not paralyzed so that 
they could not choose wickedness. It is a queer account 
of choice ; as if upon the summit of a glacier a child on 
his sled starts with power to go down, but no power to 
slop going down. Gi'eat choice, that ! — Sermon : Adam 
and Christ. 



SLANDER. — A DYING DOCTRINE. — FAULTS. Ill 

Am I persecuted by evil men's tongues? Let them 
wag. The serpents vibrate their tongues m the wilder- 
ness, but they do not trouble any one who is not in the 
wilderness. Stand aloof from all these misconceptions of 
men. Stand higher. — Sermon : The FruUs of Palience, 



I SUPPOSE to-day, from my own observation and judg- 
ment, that this scheme of the fail of man and transmis- 
sion of Adam's sin to his posterity — the lost condition 
of the human family, and the atonement made with 
reference to facts that never happened — I suppose that 
this is more in doubt in the intelligent and average 
ministerial mind to-day, than it ever was since the days 
of Augustine. Ani while a great many men think that 
it is their duty, somehow or other, to preach it, they 
preach it with such definitions and with such limitations, 
that when they have taken off all the fins and all the 
scales and all the interior and the head, there's not nmch 
left of the old doctrine at all, — though they call it by the 
old names. — Sekmon : Adam and Christ. 



We cannot, of course, treat all faults just alike. That 
is to say; some need surgery, some need merely medicine, 
some need simply watchfulness. Some faults are like 
dust upon garments; a little brushing relieves us of 
them. — Serjion ; Mulml Judgmenls. 



112 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. 

Meekness is not simply improvolcableness ; for then 
they that had the stupidest brains would be the most 
meek. . . . And it is very easy for a man to be 
patient when he is not hurt, and can't be hurt, because 
there is no nerve struck. The white-faced men that go 
through life as if they were enamelled, are not meek, 
by any means. Meekness is gentleness and kindness 
when men are subject to great provocation. It is the 
capacity and the fact of turning voluntarily the full 
tide of compassion and of benevolence upon men that 
are doing things infinitely provoking. Nobody wants to 
strike back when he is not struck : but when a man is 
struck a full blow, all the appropriate muscles tingle 
to return it again ; aud to be able to say, " Peace, be 
still," — not only that, but to be able to control the 
rising desire for revenge, and to replace eveiy feeling 
of that kind with those of gentleness and sweetness and 
real affection, — that is meekness. (It needs the more 
explanation, because you are less acquainted with that 
than with almost any other grace.) — Sermon : A Study 
of Meekness. 

God is forever producing difference. INIen, stupidly, 
are forever striving to rub it out. God never allows 
any thing to go through two generations just alike; 
and we are coopering up the work of God, or trying 
to do it, and to restore a certain sort of lost unity or 
identity. — Sermon : Concord, not Unison. 



JUDGMENT — HUMAN AND DIVINE. 113 

Taking human nature at large, a great many persons 
say, " Wliy, I trusted him because he was a church mem- 
ber." Ah! it does not do to attribute too many practi- 
cal virtues to church members. Because a man lives in 
a fine house, it does not follow that the fellow is fine 
himself. — Sermon : Mutual Judgments. 



Look at the whole walk of Christ among men, — not 
judging any man by the standard of absolute perfection; 
looking at men with sympathy as to what they were, as 
to the conditions of life in which they found themselves, 
as to the mistakes they had been led into, as to the op- 
pressions and wrongs done to them. See how he took by 
the hand of sympathy the poor, famished widow, as the 
old rich fellows were rolling their gold and silver down 
the copper vase that received it, so that they saw it go 
in, and heard it rattle all the way down. The only 
thing that seemed to arrest the eye of Christ was this 
poor little shrivelled, shrunk, and shivering widow that 
came, and had with her two mites. He could not 
see them, they were so small. They made a farthing. 
There was not a tinkle; but he heard it I He called 
his disciples to him, and said, " She has given moi'e 
than they all : they have given of their abundance ; 
she of her penury has given her whole living." He is 
to be the judge of you and of me. — Sermon : Practicable 
Ideals. 



114 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. 

It is related in one of the Western States, that a dis- 
tinguished governor, who dressed very plainly, being 
expected in a large town, went in such homely guise that 
the landlord of the hotel, thinking him to be nobody but 
a sturdy farmer, and anticipating the arrival of the gov- 
ernor and his retinue, packed him off away up in an 
attic-room, and then waited for the governor to come. 
Now, as he went up into his little room, he must have 
enjoyed it immensely. I should have done so, at any 
rate, — tlie discrepancy between the treatment accorded 
and that which the man was expected to give me, think- 
ing I was a farmer, when I was the leading statesman 
and politician in the whole State, and I seeing all the 
arrangements made for the governor, and knowing I was 
the man. Ah! it is a great thing to have the sense 
of humor. To go through life without it, to have no 
sense of the humorous and ridiculous, is like being 
in a wagon without springs. — Serjion : The Fruits of 
Patience. 

I SAY it is a sign of great hope that this vast enginery 
and exterior machinery, partly state and partly church, 
which has borne authority by which to oppress and domi- 
nate men, is toppling to its downfall. Do you call this 
the decay of religious institutions throughout the world? 
Decay! It is God's plough ripping i;p old pasture-sod, 
and getting ready to sow the seeds of righteousness. — 
Sermon : How goes the Battle? 



TOBACCO. — THEOLOGY AND INSPIRATION. 115 

A YOUNG man of a clea'i mouth, imsmeared by sour 
beer or intoxicating drinks, and unsnioked by tobacco, 
feels uneasy till he can get the nasty smell on him, in his 
hair, through and through his skin, and his whole compo- 
sition. Then he begins to think he is a gentleman. — 
Sermon: Forelooklngs. 



If one has made himself even superficially acquainted 
with the systems of theology which have prevailed in 
the Christian Church, and has seen chapter after chaj^)- 
ter, discrimination after discrimination, statement after 
statement, running very nearly through the whole com- 
pass of time, and entering widely and deeply into the 
eternal verities, he will be struck, by contrast, with the 
exceeding modesty and i-eserve of the Sacred Scriptures. 
The litterateurs and inspired men of the Bible did not 
know half so much as their interpreters think then do ; 
and the questions that are issued, debated, settled, regi- 
mented, and systematized in the great theologies that 
have prevailed from age to age, are almost unknown to 
Sacred Scripture. — Sermon : Agnostic Faith. 



The Bible is in many churches where men idolize and 
praise it, like an idol in the temple. One would think 
that it is a living thing. A man would not accidentally 
sit down on the Bible without jumping up as if he had 
sat on a wasp. — Sermon: Agnostic Faith. 



116 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. 

A MAN cannot understand any mental process except 
so far as he has had experimental participation in it. 
For instance, I never think in music. Beethoven never 
thought out of it. If I attempt to whistle a new tune, it 
is alwaj^s made up of scraps of old ones : it is a hash (and 
so I observe it is with most tune- writers). — Sermon : 
Man's Two Natures. 



Speaking of the office of ministers, he said that Christ 
went about setting men right, making them whole. 
" That is our business," said he : " we are man-vie^nlers." 

At one of the annual pew-lettings in Plymouth Church, 
one of his church members said to him, " ]\Ir. Beecher, 
we hope you will preach a good, sound gospel next year, 
because some things you have said lately did not sound 
very orthodox to us New-Englanders." With tranquil 
composure he replied, " Well, as for you, brother, you are 
very sure to hear as much gospel as you will live up to." 

At the close of another pew-renting, one of the mem- 
bers said to him, " Mr. Beecher, I've been trying all the 
evening to get a seat, and haven't succeeded." To which 
Mr. Beecher replied, " Well, then, you nmst fulfil the 
apostolic injunction, — 'having done all, to stand.'" — 
Abbott's Life of Beecher. 



LONGER EXTRACTS. 



SCHOOL REMINISCENCES. 

It was our misfortune in boyhood to go to a District 
School. 

In winter we were squeezed into the recess of the 
fartiiest corner, among little boys, who seemed to be sent 
to school merely to fill up the chinks between the bigger 
boys. Certainly, we were never sent for any such absurd 
purpose as an education. We were read and spelled 
twice a day unless something happened to prevent, which 
did happen about every other day. For the rest of the 
time we were busy keeping still. And a time we had of 
it ! Our shoes always would be scraping on the floor, or 
knocking the shins of urchins who were also being " edu- 
cated." All of our little legs together (poor, tii'ed, ner- 
vous, restless legs, with nothing to do) would fill up the 
corner with such a noise, that every ten or fifteen minutes 
the master would bring down his two-foot hickory ferule 
on the desk with a clap tliat sent shivers through our 
hearts to think how that would have felt if it had fallen 
somewhere else j and then, with a look that swept us all 

117 



118 BEECTIER AS A HUMORIST. 

into litter extremity of stillness, he would cry, " Silence ! 
in that corner 1 " Stillness would last for a few minutes, 
but little boys' memories are not capacious. Moreover, 
some of the boys had great gifts of mischief, and some of 
inirthfulness, and some had both together. The conse- 
quence was, that just when we were the most afraid to 
laugh, we saw the most comicpJ things to laugh at. 
Temptations which we could have vanquished with a 
smile out in the free air, were irresistible in our little corner 
where a laugh and a stinging slap were very apt to woo 
each other. So we would hold on and fill up; and others 
would hold on and fill up too ; till, by and by, the weakest 
would let go a mere whiffet of a laugh, and then, down 
went all the precautions, and one went off, and another 
and another, touching off the others like a pack of fire- 
crackers ! It was in vain to deny it. But, as the process 
of snapping our heads and pulling our ears went on with 
primitive sobriety, we each in turn, with tearful eyes and 
blubbering lips, declared " we didn't mean to," and that 
was true ; and that " we wouldn't do so any more," and 
that was a fib, however unintentional ; for we never 
failed to do just so again, andtliat about once an hour all 
daylong. . . . Oh, dear ! can there be any thing worse for 
a lively, mercurial, mirthful, active little boy, than going 
to a winter district-school ? Yes. Going to a summer 
district-school ! There is no comj^arison. The last is the 
Miltonic depth below the deepest depth. ... — Star 
Papers. 



EGGS. 119 



EGGS. 



Now, it sometimes happened, that when busy about 
the "chores," — foddering the horse, throwing down hay- 
to the cows (yet requiring a supplemental lock at night 
to eke out the day's pasturage), — we discovered a nest 
brimming full of hidden eggs. The hat was the bonded 
warehouse, of course. But sometimes it was a cap not of 
suitable capacity. Then the pocket came into play, and 
chiefly the skirt-pockets. Of course, we intended to 
transfer them immediately after getting into the house; 
for eggs are as dangerous in the pocket, though for dif- 
ferent reasons, as powder would be in a forgeman's 
pocket. And so, having finished the evening's work, 
and put the pin into the stable-door, we sauntered 
toward the house, behind which, and right over Chestnut 
Hill, the broad moon stood showering all the east with 
silver twilight ! All earthly cares and treasures were 
forgot in the dreamy pleasure ; and at length entering the 
house, — supper already delayed for us, — we drew up 
the chair, and peacefully sunk into it, with a suppressed 
and indescribable crunch and liquid ci'ackle underneath 
tis, which brought us up again in the liveliest manner, 
and with outcries which seemed made up of all the hen's 
cackles of all the eggs which were now holding carnival 
in our pockets! Facilis descensus Averni, sect revocare 
gradum, etc., which means it is easy to put eggs into your 
pocket, but how to get them out again, that's the ques- 



120 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. 

tion. And it was the question ! Such a hand-dripping 
business, — such a scene when the slightly angry mother 
and the disgusted maid turned the pockets inside out I 

We were very penitent ! It should never happen 
again ! And it did not — for a month or two. — Eyes 
and Ears. 



DEACON MARBLE. 

How they ever made a deacon out of Jerry IMarble I 
never could imagine ! Ilis was the kindest heart that 
ever bubbled and ran over. He was elastic, tough, in- 
cessantly active, and a prodigious worker. He seemed 
never to tire ; but after the longest day's toil, he sprang 
up the moment he had done with work, as if he were a 
fine steel spring. A few hours' sleep sufficed him, and he 
saw the morning stars the year round. His weazened 
face was leather color, but forever dimpling and chan- 
ging to keep some sort of congruity between itself and his 
eyes, that winked and blinked, and spilt over with merry 
good-nature. He always seemed afflicted when obliged 
to be sober. He had been known to laugh in meeting 
on several occasions, although lie ran his face behind his 
handkerchief and coughed, as if thai was the matter ; yet 
nobody believed it. Once, in a hot summer day, he saw 
Deacon Trowbridge, a sober and fat man, of great so- 
briety, gradually ascending from the bodily state into 
that spiritual condition called sleep. He was blameless 



DEACON MARBLE. 121 

of the act. He had struggled against the temptation 
with the whole virtue of a deacou. He had eaten two or 
three heads of fennel in vain, and a piece of orange-peel. 
He had stirred himself up. and fixed his eyes on the 
minister with intense firmness, only to have them grow 
gradually narrower and milder. If he held his head up 
firmly, it would with a sudden lapse fall away over back- 
ward. If he leaned it a little forward, it would drop 
suddenly into his bosom. At each nod, recovering him- 
self, he would nod again, with his eyes wide open, to 
impress upon the boys that he did it on purpose both 
times. . . . Happy man who does not sleep in church I 
Deacon Trowbridge was not that man. Deacou Marble 
was ! 

Deacon Marble witnessed the conflict we have sketched 
above ; and when good Mr. Trowbridge gave his next 
lurch, recovered himself with a snort, and then drew out 
a red handkerchief, and blew his nose with a loud imita- 
tion, as if to let the boys know that he had not been 
asleep, poor Deacon Marble was brought to a sore strait. 
But I have reason to think that he would have weathered 
the stress if it had not been for a sweet-faced little boy 
in the front of the gallery. The lad had been innocently 
watching the same scene, and at its climax laughed out 
loud, with a frank and musical explosion, and then sud- 
denly disappeared backward into his mother's lap. That 
laugh was just too much, and Deacon Marble could no 
more help laughing than could Deacou Trowbridge help 



122 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

sleeping. Nor could he conceal it. Though he coughed, 
and put up his handkerchief, and hemmed — it was a 
laugh, Deacon ! — and every boy in the house knew it, and 
liked you better for it — so inexperienced were they I — 
Norwood. 



MANNERS. 



Will any man tell me why I am forbidden by what is 
called " good manners " to pour my tea into a saucer, and 
cool it there? Much reproach has been heaped upon 
" strong " tea and coffee, which properly belongs to hot 
tea and coffee. Every one knows how much the efficient 
action of chemical agents is intensified by heat. Scald- 
ing tea is far worse than strong tea; but to be both 
scalding and strong, is an attack upon the human body 
which no man ought to venture who has any regard for 
health. But etiquette forbids me to cool my coffee in any 
other manner than by waiting. Coffee-cups, in houses 
where the secret of making good coffee is known, should 
be like the human heart, large and deep; and in such 
cases the beverage will, like true affection, cool very 
slowly. Hence, one who does not wish to wait till the 
meal is over before drinking coffee, must either cool it in 
his saucer, or drink it hot, or wait and drink it after break- 
fast, and all because of the absurd notion that it is not 
good manners to pour coffee into your saucer. 

Even more will be shocked when I avow myself as an 



MANNERS. 123 

advocate for the rights of the knife. Now, custom has 
reduced it to the mere function of cutting up one's food. 
That done, it is laid down, and a fork serves every other 
purpose. By practice, one gains unexpected dexterity in 
using a fork for purposes to which it is ill adapted. The 
Chinese, in like manner, make awkward chop-sticks rarely 
sei-viceable, by practice little short of legerdemain ; but 
is that a good reason for the use of chop sticks ? A fork, 
as now made, is unfitted to pierce any morsel upon its 
tines, and yet they are sharp enough to afBict the tongue 
if carelessly used. They are split so as to be useless for 
liquids, and yet they are used as if they were spoons. 
The fork compels the manipulator to poke and push and 
pile up the food-material, which tends to fall back and 
apart: it is iiiade to pursue the dainty tidbits, in which 
often the very core of flavor resides, around the plate 
in a hopeless chase ; and at length a bit of bread is called 
in as an auxiliary, and thus, while the slim-legged fork, in 
one hand, is chasing a slim liquid mouthful, a wad of 
bread in the other goes mopping and sopping around to 
form a corner, and between the two is at length accom- 
plished what is called genteel feeding I 

Meanwhile, a broad knife is fitted for the very function 
which the fork refuses, and the wad of bread ill performs. 
The reasons for refusing the knife as an active feeding- 
implement are worthy of the awkward practice. "It is 
liable to cut the mouth " no more than a fork is to stick 
into lip or tongue. 



124 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. 

If men ate with razors, there would be some reason for 
avoidance. But table-knives are blunt-edged. It is even 
difficult to make them cut when one tries ; and if they are 
properly used, the back of the blade will be turned to the 
mouth. We do not object to the fork, but we demand 
a restoration of the knife from banishment. We do not 
desire to enforce its use, but such a liberation as shall 
leave each one free to use the knife for conveying food to 
the mouth when that is most convenient, and the fork 
when that is preferred. Equal rights we demand for black 
and white, for home-born or innnigrant, for lich and poor, 
for men and women, and for knives and forks. — News- 
paper Letter. 



BOOK-KEEPING. 

Somebody has sent to me a very nice book on book- 
keeping. And no book could have been more timely. 
There is no other point on which 1 have a more lively 
interest than that of keeping books. In fact, I have 
found it very difficult to get them, and still more difficult 
to keep them. There seems to be no conscience formed 
as to book-theft. . . . Pencils, umbrellas, canes, and books 
are not property. They cannot be appropriated by one 
nma as owner. They belong to the category in which is 
included air, light, water, and fire : who wants them may 
have them. I will not say that this is yet the written 
law. It is the common law. 



BOOK-KEEriNG. 125 

Books ? The only bodies are they for noble spirits 
that have no ailments or annoyances. Books talk to you, 
not through the ear, but another way. They shout their 
silent meaning at the soul through the eye. They never 
importune, and are never reluctant. They are always 
full witliout eating. They are still, but never sleep. 
They grow old without infirmity. They are neither sick 
nor weary. They outwatch the watcher, and greet the 
morning, and wait for the stars at evening. For every 
other guest we make a couch, and spread a table. But 
strange are the manners of books and pictures, that bring 
rest to our perturbations, and are guests that perform all 
the offices of hospitality for the host. 

Why should they be singled out for theft? . . . 

How many first volumes are gone? What is a 
widowed volume ? Oh that they would take the set if 
they will take any! The surprise of their "taking 
off " comes to you, too, at unexpecting moments. You 
are discussing with a friend of some matter: there is 
illustration or proof in Kugler's Handbook. You run 
for it, and then first learn that it is gone! That gem 
from Didot's press, — all that you know of it is, it was 
here, it is not hei-e, and it never will be here That last 
clause is the result of long experience. If a book is poor, 
it is not worth the trouble of returning; if good, it is too 
valuable to be returned. . • . 

You will now understand how delighted I was to per- 
ceive that this subject was attracting attention, and that 



126 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. 

treatises were written upon it. " Book-keeping " — for 
schools, too, it says. That's beginning at the right place. 
I have not read the book yet ; but any attempt to rectify 
this great evil of books that cannot be kept must do 
good. . . . 

I shall read it soon. No doubt, it will be another ex- 
cellent moral aid to weak consciences. The work that 
will teach me Book-keeping, will do what nothing has 
done before. I cannot keep money. I cannot keep books. 
Blessed is he that shall teach me how ! — Eyes and Ears. 



THE PARSON'S HORSE. 

The horse was the parson's favorite. He literally had 
no faults. He was never known to kick, or to bite any 
thing but food. Hay constituting his principal food, a 
larger quantity was required than would have been if 
oats or corn had furnished more concentrated nourish- 
ment in smaller bulk. Nature, ever kind to her crea- 
tures, gradually enlarged the barrel of the horse, until 
his belly was puffed out far beyond any requirements of 
beauty. A large, mild, and sleepy eye revealed but half 
the quietness of his disposition. His legs might be 
handled by boys. You might sit down safely between 
his hind-legs. There was no liberty which j'ou could 
not take, except that of fast driving. You might pour 
a bushel of potatoes suddenly upon his haunches without 



THE PARSON'S HORSE. 127 

producing excitement — not, however, because he was 
lifeless, but from mere self-possession ; for a peck of oats 
(a luxury seldom ventured 1 at the other extremity 
quickly showed there was life in him. 

He was safe. "Slow and sure" was his maxim. 
When the good parson was once seated in the chaise, the 
events were as follows : when the self-possessed animal, 
with his head and neck declining a little below the line 
of his back, felt the reins in the Doctor's hands, he 
opened ttis eyes ; and having been standing on his three 
legs, the fourth crooked up, and resting on the edge of 
the hoof, he brought them all squarely under him, as if 
saying, "I am all here, sir." Next the Doctor pulled 
both reins, and they were pulled. Then he lapped them 
both upon the back, with a gentle slap, and pulled one 
of them with some decision. The time had come. The 
horse started, walked into the road, and then, after 
several admonitions, fell into an easy jog, which satisfied 
the parson's ambition. But no persuasion could carry 
that trot up the slightest rise in the ground. It was this 
habit of stopping early in ascending, and starting again 
late in descending hills, that secured to this matchless 
horse long life and immunity from strains. Dr. Buell 
innocently told Hiram Beers that he never used a bottle 
of liniment in his life. 

Hiram waited till the parson was out of hearing, and 
then discoursed : — 

" Wal. I'd bet on that ! Bottle of liniment ! I should 



128 BEECBER AS A HUMORIST. 

as soon think of liniment on a hoe-handle or a gun- 
stock ! That horse thinks it's always Sunday, and that 
he's goin' to a funeral all the while. I'd give anybody 
five dollars to git three miles an hour out of that critter ! 
If there was two of 'em, they wouldn't go a mile an hour ; 
and four such horses — good gracious! it would take a 
yoke of oxen to start 'em anyhow 1 " — Norwood. 



STUPID RELIGIONISTS. 

" Henby "Ward Beecher says, ' The only way to extermi- 
nate the Canada thistle is to plant it for a crop, and propose 
to make money out of it. Then worms will gnaw it, bugs 
will bite it, beetles will bore it, aphides will suck it, birds 
will peck it, heat will scorch it, rains will drown it, and 
mildew and blight will cover it I ' " 

And now guess, if you can, what harm lies couched in 
these words. Put on your spectacles, and let our critic 
express himself. The Italics are his, not mine. 

" These bugs, beetles, aphides, heat, rain, and mildew are 
the messengers of God. If they are sent, they are on an 
errand for God. Now, if the above extract has a point, it is 
that when mankind plant a crop of any kind of grain or 
seed, God takes a malicious pleasure in defeating such 
schemes," 

This is exquisite ! If mildew attacks my grape-vines, 
it is on an errand for God ; and if I sprinkle them with 



STUPID RELlGIONISTFi. 129 

sulphur as a remedy, I put brimstone into the very face 
of God's messenger ! When it rains, — is not rain, too, 
God's messenger? — does "Puritan" dare to open a 
blasphemous umbrella, and push it up iu the very face 
of this divine messenger? When a child is attacked by 
one of " God's messengers," — measles, canker-rash, 
dysentery, scai'let-fever, — would it be a very great sin 
to send for a doctor on purpose that lie might resist 
these divine messengers ? There are insects which 
attack men, against one of which we set up combs, and 
against another sulphur. " Nay," says Puritan. " If they 
are sent, they are on an errand for God." " Puritan " 
goes on : — 

"Such a sentiment is far deeper in its tone than a mere 
murmtir. EsiJecially as Mr. Beecher's farm at Fishkill is 
■well known to le cultivated with reference to making 
money." 

Yes, we confess it. A " murmur " very imperfectly 
expresses our feelings as we dig at a Canada thistle, or 
squirt whale-oil soapsuds over a myriad of " Puritan's '' 
divine messengers, called aphides. A grumble would not 
be too strong a word to use on such occasions. Nay, the 
reverend gentleman has been known to say, in a paroxysm 
of horticultural impiety, " I wish every rose-bug on the 
place was dead ! " which must seem to " Puritan " a 
piece of horrible depravity. 

1 did not before know that I had a farm in Fishkill. 



130 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

My experience with the farm at Peekskill, "which is 
well known to be cultivated with reference to making 
money," is such, that, if it be true that I own another 
farm at Fishkill, I shall consider myself on the straight 
road to the poorhouse ! 

But there is more coming : — 

" The charge of the reverend gentleman amounts to this, — 
that whenever he attempts to raise a crop of wheat, corn, 
flax, or grass, God sends beetles, hugs, aphides, heat, rain, 
and mildew, to blast his designs. 

" This has the ring of Cain when his sacrifice was rejected. 
That primeval sinner A^euted his anger towards God on his 
holy brother. Mr. H. W. Beecher vents his anger towards 
the real cause of his mildewed crops, by charging the inno- 
cent instruments in their Maker's hand. If this is not 
blasphemy in one as well informed as Mr. Beecher is, we 
have read his words amiss. 

" Puritan." 

I may have been mistaken, but it has seemed to me 
that every crop that I have ever attempted to raise has 
had swarms of " messengers " sent upon it. But, mitil 
now, I never suspected that God sent them, in any other 
sense than that in which he sends diseases, famines, 
tyrants, literary " Puritans," and all other evils which 
afflict humanity. 

But what is to be done about this matter ? If it be 
*' blasphemy " to sjieak against bugs, it can be little 



STUPID RELIGIONISTS. 131 

short of sacrilege to smash them. Here have I been, in 
the blindness of unrepented depravity, slaughtering 
millions of " the messengers of God " called aphides ! 
I have ruthlessly slahi those other angelic " messengers " 
called mosquitoes, who came singing to me with mis- 
placed confidence. I have even railed at fleas, and 
spoken irreverently of gnats. I have gone farther: on 
a sultry summer's day, after dinner, I have turned out 
of my room every one of those " messengers of God " 
which wicked boys call flies — every one but one, I 
mean , and just as the sounds grew faint, and sight dim, 
and I was sinking into that entrancing exi)erience, the 
first virgin moments of slumber, an affectionate fly 
settled on my nose, ran down to kiss my lips, and, 
like a traveller on a new continent, set about explor- 
ing my whole face. Instead of greeting this " mes- 
senger " divine as " Puritan " would, I confess to a 
lively vexation. Aim! if speaking of flies in a very 
disrespectful manner is blasphemous, I must confess to 
the charge ! 

But soberly, is it not pitiable to have among us men 
pretending to intelligence, who bring religion into 
discredit by such hopeless stupidity ? 

In the velocipede-rinks, besides those for speed, 
premiums are offered to the men who can ride the 
slowest. " Puritan '' should enter himself. If anybody 
can go slower, he must be a marvel of torpidity. — Star 
Papers. 



132 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

FAMILY GOVERNMENT. 

"William! stop that noise, I say! — won't you stop? 
Stop, I tell you, or I'll slap your mouth ! " 

William bawls a little louder. 

" William, I tell you ! ain't you going to stop ? Stoj), I 
say! If you don't stop, I'll whip you, sure." 

William goes up a fifth, and beats time with his heels. 

" I never saw such a child ! — he's got temper enough 
for a whole town : I'm sure he didn't get it from me. 
Why don't you be still ? Whist ! Wh-i-st ! Come, come, 
be still, won't you ? Stop, stop, stop, I say ! Don't you 
see this — don't you see this stick ? See here now " (cuts 
the air with the stick). 

William, more furious, kicks very manfully at his 
mother — grows redder in the face, lets out the last note, 
and begins to reel and shake and twist in a most spiteful 
manner. 

" Come, William ! come, dear — that's a darling — 
naughty William! come, that's a good boy; donty cry, 
p-o-o-r little fellow; sant ab-o-o-s-e you, sail eh! Ma's 
'ittle man, want a piece of sooger? Ma's little boy got 
cramp, p-o-o-r little sick boy," etc., etc. 

WiUia.m wipes up, and minds, and eats his sugar, and 
stops. 

After Scene. — The minister is present, and very 
nice talk is going on upon the necessity of governing 
children. " Too true," says mamma, " some people will 



PERFUMERY. 133 

give up to their children, and it ruins them — every child 
should be governed. But then, it won't do to carry it too 
far: if one whips all the time, it will break a child's 
spirit. One ought to mix kindness and firmness together 
in managing children." 

" I think so," said the preacher; " firmness first, and 
then kindness." 

"Yes, sir, that's my practice exactly." — Fruits, Flow- 
ers, and Farming. 



PERFUMERY. 



Your worship is almost destroyed in church. One 
smell is before you, another behind you. The odors of 
sanctity ai-e manifold abominations. If you repair to the 
concert-room, the air is polluted and waiting for you. 
Good manners forbid a gentleman to hold his nose while 
talking with a lady drenched with cologne or lavender. 
One may almost recognize his friends, as dogs do game, 
by their peculiar odor. Every one affects a peculiar 
smell. We might almost name persons by their favorite 
odor. Miss Vanilla smiles yonder; next her the charming 
Miss Orris-root. There are several of the Lemon Ver- 
bena family present, and yet more of tlie Lemon family. 
Then, there are the Bergamots, the Orange-blossoms, the 
Bitter Almonds, and other old and respectable families. 

Once in a while comes a lady of transcendent good taste, 
wholly inodorous. She does uotcan*y a saudal woodfau. 



134 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

She wears nothing kept in a camphor-wood trunk. Her 
silks have neither been hung in a cedar closet, nor smoked 
with French pastilles. Her gloves smell of kid leather 
— as they ought to. No myrrh, no incense, no nuts, 
blossoms, fruits, seeds, or leaves, have been crushed 
to yield for her any odor of offence. She is pure as 
water, and as inodorous ; as bright as a pearl, and as 
scentless; witching as a opal, and as devoid of perfume. 
Oh that she might live a thousand years, and be the an- 
cestress of ten thousand just like her ! — Eyes and Ears. 



SAILING. 



. . . What is more innocent than sailing, unless it be 
rowing ? No cruelty is enacted : no muscles are over- 
strained. And what sight upon earth is more exceeding- 
ly beautiful than a fleet of snowy yachts, blown like sea- 
gulls across the swelling water ? Of course you will own 
a boat, even if you do not join the club. You will often 
choose to see how your bit of ground looks from a liquid 
stand-point. You will often cool your summer afternoons 
by the breezes off shore, and seek the ocean air long 
befoi'e it bears its coolness in upon the land. It is a A'ery 
noble thing to see the sun go down upon a golden sea, 
whose tremulous swells and fretting crests flash the 
glory from wave to wave, and, breaking up the broad 
sheet of red light into myriads of sparkles and fiery 
circles, play with it, tossing it up and down, hither and 



A NEW-ENGLAND SUNDAY. 135 

thither, as if it were a liquid floating on the sea. Do you 
know how to manage a boat ? to row, to scull, to set sail, 
to reef or take in sail ? Pray be careful ! Do not carry 
too much sail. I have long been of opinion that men 
and ships in our day carry to3 much top-hamper. While 
the vKnd is gentle, you may spread everything: but these 
crank hulls and enormous sails are very tempting to ca- 
pricious squalls ; and some day, as you sit with your hand 
on the tiller, dreaming out a sermon, under which your 
good people will perhaps dream too, down will come a 
sudden swoop, and with one rattle and plunge you will be 
all overboard 1 Never go out without a life preserver 
under your arms. It is awkward, to be sure, to sit 
trussed up with these inflated air-ruffles under one's arms ; 
but it will be yet more awkward to flounder about in the 
water without them, especially if you cannot swim. . . . 
— Eyes and Ears. 

A NEW-ENGLAND SUNDAY. 

But Rose, having reached the mature age of twelve, 
was now manifesting her power over" the Westminster 
Shorter Catechism ; and as it was simply an achievement 
of memory, and not of the understanding, she had the 
book at great advantage, and soon subdued every ques- 
tion and answer in it. . . . 

" What do those words mean, Rose ? " 

"Which words. Pa?" 

"Adoption, sauctification, and justification?'* 



136 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. 

Rose hesitated, and looked at her mother for rescue. 

*' Doctor, why do you trouble the child ? Of course 
she don't know yet all the meaiiiug. But that will come 
to her when she grows older." 

*' You make a nest of her memory, then, and put 
words there, like eggs, for future hatching ? " • 

" Yes ; that is it exactly : birds do not hatch their eggs 
the minute they lay them. They wait." 

"Laying eggs at twelve to be hatched at twenty is 
subjecting them to some risk, is it not ? " 

" It might be so with eggs, but not with catechism. 
That will keep without spoiling a hundred years ! " 

"• Because it is so dry ? " 

" Because it is so good. But do, dear husband, go 
away, and not put notions iu the children's heads. It's 
hard enough already to get them through their tasks. 
Here's poor Arthur who has been two Sundays on one 
question, and has not got it yet." 

Arthur, aforesaid, was sharp and bright in any thing 
addressed to his reason, but he had no verbal memory; 
and he was therefore wading painfully through the cate- 
chism, like a man in a deep, muddy road, with this dif- 
ference, — that the man carries too much clay with him, 
vhile nothing stuck to poor Arthur. . . . 

" What is God, Arthur?" said his mother. 

" God is — is a — God is — and God — God is a " — 

Having got safely so far, the mother suggests 
' Spirit? " at which he gasps eagerly, " God is a sjjirit." 



WASPS. 137 

" Infinite," says the mother. 

"Infinite,'' says Arthur. 

And then blushing and twisting in his chair, he seemed 
unable to extract any thing more. 

" Eternal," says the mother. 

" Eternal," says the boy. 

" Well, go on : God is a spirit, infinite, eternal ; — 
what else ? " 

"God is a spirit, eternal, infinite, — what else? " 

" Xonsense ! " says the startled mother. 

" Nonsense," goes on the boy, supposing it to be a part 
of the regular answer. 

*' Arthur, stop ! what work j'ou are making ! " 

To stop was the very exercise in Catechism at which 
he was most proficient; and he stopped so fully and 
firmly that nothing more could be got out of him or 
into him during the exercise. — Norwood. 



WASPS. 



The wasp is always well dressed, and always ready for 
company. A nimble ci'eature, exquisite in every partic- 
ular, — trig, polished, burnished, elegant in form, — 
what single thing can be alleged against him except that 
little stiletto which he carries in a terminal sheath ? Yet 
he is not to be blamed. He did not put it there. All 
that in reason can be required is, that he use his cou- 



138 BEECUER AS A HUMORIST. 

cealed weapons in a manner conformable to justice and 
good morals. . . . 

Now, for a gentleman at leisure walking up and 
down, soliloquizing good will to all creation, it is a 
very awkward thing to have a wasp creeping up be- 
tween his boot and pantaloon, and he be ignorant of 
the fact I 

The poor insect is unconscious of any impropriety. 
He has no suspicion of the scenes which you will soon 
enact. It is not until he has ascended above your knee 
that some motion constraining the cloth presses him 
close to your warm flesh. The contact is a terror to him. 
It may be the bosom of a devouring enemy! Like a 
hero, he will die fighting. He tln-usts out his sword in 
a manner that dispels every poetic dream, and brings you 
to the realities of life with such a clutch at the spot as 
no man can give except one who has once had a wasp 
between raiment and body. You have got him ! To do 
it you have taken a large grasp, that he may be encom- 
passed with tliicknesses of cloth impervious to the longest 
sting. Eut the act and attitude are not favorable to 
grace. You rush toward the house or barn careless of 
pace or dignity, and eager only for deliverance.' Now, 
unless one has been drilled, it is difficult to disrobe while 
you are bent half double, and with only a left hand at 
liberty for use and an enemy in the rear. As the 
cautious work goes on, some luckless fold loosens, and 
the enemy is at you again, this time in good earnest. 



WASPS. 139 

Strange that so small an instrument can put a brave man 
into such ecstatic haste ! But there is many a man who 
could firmly face a cannon, who could not stand for a 
moment with a wasp under his garment. 

The fact is, you do not know where he is — or will be. 
He may be in your hand, or he may be just in the act of 
lancing you, here or there or anywhere. And the expec- 
tation is dreadful. We know that it is. An enemy in 
the dark is always powerful through fear. 

I consider one wasp under the dress as more terrible 
than nine hundred and ninety-nine in a fair fight in the 
open field ! 

Bad as this scene is to a proud nature with delicate 
susceptibilities, there is a disgrace even worse ; for 
within a few days, and while your flesh creeps with the 
remembrance, you are walking your garden with a few 
friends, picking flowers for one and another in turn, and 
nourishing the hours with genial converse, when in the 
very middle of a sentence you seize yourself with a des- 
perate clutch, and without word or bow you race and 
hobble toward the house again. You have but one 
single comfort, — that you are not stung yet. With 
utter expedition, you come down to the root of the diffi- 
culty, and find that thei-e was no wasp at all, only a leaf 
tickling your skin ! In fact, you are angi-y now to think 
there was no wasp. If one must go through the fear, 
the march, the fumble, the search, he ought at least to be 
rewarded with a wasp ! — Eyes and Ears. 



140 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

MOSQUITOES. 

The day has been too hot. The night is sultry. You 
are nervous and I'estless. No place so good as the bed ; 
and to the chamber you repair, hoping soon to lose all 
remembrance of your cares and troubles in sleep. The 
light is extinguished, and you resign yourself to the 
pleasing sensations of approaching rest. When lo ! a 
thin, piercing sound salutes you ! It needs no interpre- 
tation. It is a mosquito come a-serenading. Is there 
any trumpet that can wake a nervous man more quickly 
or more entirely? Every sense is attent. Now the sound 
comes near, now recedes, now it is lost. 

It soon comes again ; and, watching your opportunity, 
you give yourself a broad slap upon the face, hoping that 
the mosquito shared it with you I For a moment he 
seems dead. You experience a minute satisfaction of 
petty revenge. 

But soon the inevitable sound comes again, but with a 
hither and thither motion. You are acutely attentive. 
This time, to make sure, your hand is disengaged, and 
lies outside of the coverlet, ready for a surprising blow. 
He alights. You feel his delicate touch upon your fore- 
head. Quicker than winking, your hand follows him 
with such a slap as makes the room echo. But he is 
quicker than you are, and, besides, sees in darkness much 
better. . . . After all, perhaps tliat last slap did the 
business for him. It certainly did for you. . . . 



A BOY AGAIN. 141 

All this would not be worth telling, but for its appli- 
cation. I see on every hand nieu engaged in beating 
themselves on account of fears, cares, frets, and petty 
annoyances. . . . 

Love has its mosquitoes. How many sounds does jeal- 
ousy hear ! How many dreads does anxious love breed ! 
How many nameless fears, and how many " what ifs ! " 

Much of the anxiety of business is mere mosquito-hunt- 
ing. Wlien I see a man pale and anxious, not for what 
has happened, but for what may happen, I say, " Strike 
your own face, do it again, and keep doing it, for there 
is nothing else to hit ! " — Eyes and Ears. 



A BOY AGAIN. 



O FOR a boy's apj^etite ! We needed no morning bell. 
Hunger used to awaken us betimes. We plunged into 
our clothes, and darted for the kitchen, where stood 
Rachel, black as night, with a loaf of bread white as 
milk. She cut a slice an inch thick, smooth as a line 
had measured it. It needed neither sauce nor butter. It 
was a mere morsel, sent before, to hold the citadel until 
breakfast could come to the rescue ! So it was every 
day, and during all our growing years. 

Then, there were the apple-eating exploits. If there 
were not boys yet alive somewhere, doing the same 
thing, it would not do to tell the quantity of apples daily 



142 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

consumed. Indeed, it seems to our memory that we were 
always eating apx^les — after they began to get ripe. 
With what a rush did we two youngsters go to the 
" Early Bough " tree, to see what liad fallen during the 
night ! Blessings on the rain that softened the stem, and 
on the wind that loves boys, and plumps down through 
the night the ripe apples for them ! 

Then the cows were to be driven to pasture, and the 
apple-trees on the road paid tribute. What did the 
farmers put their trees along the fence for, if they did 
not want boys to get the fruit? Then, before returning, 
we had to look in the sweet-flag swamp, to see if the 
graters (as we called the spadix, or blossom-spike) were 
ripe. These, too, were devoured. If a few berries came 
in our way, they followed the apples. A bunch of sorrel- 
leaves furnished acid. Should a wild honeysuckle ap- 
pear in our travels, bearing swamp-apples, — by which 
term boys designate the watery and tasteless swellings 
on azalea bushes, — we went at them as voraciously as if 
we had not had a mouthful to eat tliat day. 

These entremets did not prejudice us against a slice or 
two of bread in the middle of the forenoon ; and if an 
errand took us over to Aunt Bull's, there was sure to be 
— O those doughnuts ! By such timely auxiliaries our 
famishing stomach held out till twelve-o'clock dinner, 
and again with like treatment till supper; and after that, 
if late in the season, or in winter, came a hatful of apples, 
brought up from the cellar (a boy's hat is the one uni- 



A WESTERN TRIP. 143 

versal measure, liquid or solid) ; and without more ado, 
three, four, or five apples apiece wound up the day, and 
sent us to bed. Now, we hoiiestly declare that, in all 
our boyhood, we do not remember a single day of indi- 
gestion, except on one or two " training-days," when we 
ate stuff not lawful to utter. But day after day, for 
years, we ate till eathig could no further go, without a 
thought of inconvenience, so well did the mill grind its 
grist 1 . . . — Star Papers. 



A WESTERN TRIP. 

Is there any thing on earth so much to be pitied as a 
trunk ? What awful violence it suffers in packing ! what 
crowding and straining, to get in twice as much as it can 
possibly hold ! Then comes the shutting, the getting on 
the lid, the jumping and jamming, the red-faced vexa- 
tion because the latch will not quite catch, the final 
triumph, the twirl of the key, the strapping and cover- 
fastening. How trying to weak human nature is a strap 
and buckle ! You pull till the blood threatens to burst 
from j'our head, and almost bring the hole up to the 
buckle-tongue. You give it a quick jerk to let it in, but 
it only springs back. You try again, and lose it again, 
and your patience with it. You jerk, and protest, and 
will have it come right. At length you propose a com- 
promise, and cut another hole in the strap half way, and 



/ 



./ 



144 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

deceive yourself with thinking that you have had your 
own way. 

This may end your troubles, but it is but the beginning 
of the trunk's. The hacknian drops it : the porter slings 
it aboard. The baggage-master fires it into the heap, as 
if he meant to make it strike fire. At night it is to be 
changed at Dunkirk, say. They are pitched out of the 
car like bombs. Two or three employees seem possessed 
with very spite at them. They catch them by the handle, 
give them a prodigious twirl on one end, and the trunk 
spins like a top to a corner of the baggage-space, and 
smashes up against its fellows. Again, at Cleveland, 
they are sent out like shot from the cars, piled up on the 
trucks, little ones at the bottom, and big ones at the top, 
some are smashed, some are dented, some are ripped, but 
all go headlong and heterogeneously into the new limbo 
of baggage. It is very interesting, then, to examine 
some of these trunks, which a kind aunt has labelled, 
" Please lift it by the handles ; " or, " Keep this side up." 
One might as well put a label on a Paixhan shot, giving 
directions for its careful journey. ... — Eyes and Ears. 



FAMILY PRAYERS. 

When men begin their praj^ers with, " O thou omnip- 
otent, omniscient, omnipresent, all-seeing, ever-living, 
blessed Potentate, LorJ God Jehovah ! " I should think 



A PLEA FOR THE BOYS. 145 

they would take breath. Think of a man in his family, 
hurried for his breakfast, praying in such a strain ! lie 
has a note coming due, and it is going to be paid to-day, 
and he feels buoyant; and he goes down on his knees 
like a cricket on the hearth, and piles uj) these majesti- 
cally moving phrases about God. Then lie goes on to 
say that he is a sinner : he is proud to say that he is a. 
sinner. Then he asks for his daily bread. He has it ; 
and he can always ask for it when he has it. Then he 
jumps up, and goes over to the city. He comes back at 
night, and goes through a similar wordy form of "evening 
prayers ;" and he is called " a praying man ! " A praying 
man ? I might as well call myself an ornithologist be- 
cause I eat a chicken once in a while for my dinner. — 
Sermon : Prayer. 

A PLEA FOR THE BOYS. 

"I DO believe that the very spirit of mischief is in that 
boy I From morning to night, it is out of one thing into 
another. There is nothing safe when he's about." 

Why don't you whip him ? 

" "Whip him ! There is hardly a day goes over his 
head that he's not punished, besides the gi-and totals that 
are paid off by his father about once a fortnight." 

Is he ugly? Do you think he means to do wrong? 

"That's the worst of it. He has as kind a heart as 
need be, and is always so sorry. But it does no good. 



146 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. 

The minute my back is turned, he is tying up the two 
cats, or putting chairs before the door to see tliem tum- 
ble over when some one opens it, or pouncing out of a 
corner suddenly upon Sally, whose screams seem to de- 
light him. Yesterday he got the scissors, and began to 
cut his own hair. A perfect fright he made of himself. 
He tied Aunt Prue's dress to the back of her rocking- 
chair the other day, so that when she got up, the chair 
got up too. Only a week ago he put a wick into his 
father's bottle of bear's grease, and set it on fire ; and 
yesterday he must needs collect all the tooth-powder he 
could find in the house, and mix it in a tumbler with 
lampoil, to paint the bureau withl Oh, dear! I am 
never at rest a minute with him, except when he is out- 
doors at play. There is somebody scolding down-stairs, 
or crying out up-stairs; and when there is silence, I know 
that some peculiar mischief is hatching I've talked and 
talked to him, but there is no use in it. He is sorry, 
and will not do so again ; and that seems to act like an 
absolution, and he is ready with a cheerful heart for the 
next scrape. Oh, if Robert were only half as good as 
Mr. Goodkin's James! If I ever live to see him grow 
■up, I hope that I shall have some comfort in the boy; 
for Heaven knows 1 have very little now ! " 

Now, we take the boy's side. We know just how he 
feels. 

Never scold children, but soberly and quietly reprove. 
Do not employ shame except in extreme cases. The 



CLOTHES. 147 

suffering is acute ; it hurts self-respect in the cliiltl, to 
reprove it before tlie family ; to ridicule it, to tread down 
its feelings ruthlessly, is to wake in its bosom malignant 
passion. A child is defenceless: he is not allowed to 
argue. He is often tried, condemned, and executed in a 
second. He finds himself of little use; he is put to 
things he don't care for, and withheld from things that 
he does like ; he is made the convenience of grown-up 
people ; is hardly supposed to have any rights, except in 
a corner, as it were ; is sent hither and thither ; is made 
to get up or sit down for everybody's convenience but his 
own; is snubbed and catechised, until he learns to dodge 
government, and elude authority, and then be whipped 
for being " such a lying whelp that no one can believe 
him." 

Well, well! girls may have the hardest time of it in 
after-life, but for the first fifteen years boys are the 
sufferers. — Star Papers. 



CLOTHES. 



Are not clothes an evidence of sin, and a penalty there- 
for ? When one considers the care, labor, mental trouble, 
and various degrees of discipline, connected with clothing, 
it seems strange that it should not have been arranged for 
men as for birds and animals. What a large part of 
human industry is employed in the manufacture of fab- 



148 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

rics ! how great the number of persons who spend their 
lives in cutting, fitting, sewing, and otherwise preparing, 
dress ! Then, too, the time which every one of us must 
consume in thinljing of dress, selecting and arranging ; 
and the daily consumption of time in robing and disrob- 
ing 1 All this care and expense are spared to birds and 
beasts. It is said that they toil not, neither do they spin I 
So neither do they weave, cut, or sew ! They have no 
buttons to put on, or grumble about when they come off. 

There are my ducks : they have the most compact dress- 
ing-case ever invented. Do they wish to eat, — the bill 
is employed ; do they wish to carve and cut their food, — 
the bill is case-knife or carving-knife, and fork to boot I 
Do they wish to dress cloth, — the bill is better than tear 
sels are I Would they brush their coat and pantaloons, — 
behold ! the bill is brush too. Would they prepare them- 
selves with a mackintosh, or india-rubber garment, against 
water and weather, — the bill goes to work, and, from a 
little private arrangement of tlieir own, extracts the wet- 
repelling oil, and lays it on evenly all over their coat. 
\^'ould they brush their hair, polish their boots, — again 
comes this facile instrument-of-all-work, the bill, and 
dusts tlie one, and rubs down the other. Then, with in- 
imitable simplicity, this important member turns to the 
dinner, and becomes, indeed, a bill of fare and food. 
How much would human life be simplified by some such 
arrangement I 

There, too, is my friend the bobolink ! He steps off 



CLOTHES. 149 

his perch in the morning, finds a wash-basin in the dew 
on a head of clover, and makes his toilet with flowers for 
a looking-glass. He sings a while, brushes his hair, sings 
again, takes a bite of breakfast, and eats, sings, and 
brushes, without fastidious suggestions of a ridiculous 
propriety. 

My cows, too, have a very economical method of arran- 
ging their wardrobe. It is a wonderful convenience to 
have your clothes grow on you. In fact, a cow is prepar- 
ing a coat and vest in the mere act of eating ! Since hair 
and skin are formed from secretions, and these are sup- 
plied to the blood by digestion of food, the stomach turns 
out to be a great cloth-manufactory. And while a cow, 
lying down at evening under a tree, seems the very pic- 
ture of quiet, chewing her cud with half-shut eyes, she is, 
in fact, busy at dress-making ! 

Only man is doomed to spend a large portion of his 
time in providing the materials and making preparation 
for his clothes. How odd it would seem to see a robin 
pull off its feather coat at night, and prepare for retiring ! 

How much stranger still, if respectable men had their 
clothes formed upon them ! and vests, pantaloons, coats, 
secreted from their food I It a button flew off, lo, a button 
germ would at once begin to swell and grow ! if a seam 
ripped, or some unlucky contact tore a hole, the parts 
would throw out new matter for repairs, and bridge over 
the gulf. Alas ! it is vain to repine or speculate upon the 
probable convenience of a dif!!erent arrangement. Here 



150 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. 

we are, just as we are ! And sheep and flax and cotton 
must give us staple ; we must dye, spin, and weave ; meas- 
ure and cut, fit and sew, put on and wear out, cast off and 
renew, to the end of the world. ... — Eijes and Ears. 



GOING TO SCHOOL. 

... A GOOD village primary school ought to be a 
cross between a nursery and a play-room ; and the teacher 
ought to be playmate, nurse, and mother, all combined. 
One teacher we had, young, pale, large-eyed, sweet of 
voice, but not prone to speak, — bless her ! — why must 
she have consumption, and one day disapj^ear? And the 
next day, behold, in her place, a tall, sharp, nervous, 
energetic, conscientious spinster, whose conscience took 
to the rod as a very means of grace I The first one would 
have made us love and obey her. We were even begin- 
ning. From the second we were marvellously delivered. 

" Mother, I don't want to go to school." 

"You don't wish to grow uj) a dunce, do you, Henry?" 

" Yes, marm." 

" What ? Grow up like a poor, ignorant child, go out 
to service, and live without knowing any thing ? " 

" Yes, marm." 

" Well, suppose you begin now. I'll put an apron on 
you, and you shall stay at home and do housework. 
How would you like that '; " 



SLEEPING ON THE CARS. 151 

« Oh, do, Ma ! " 

Sure enough, we were permitted to stay away from 
school, provided we would "do housework;" and all 
summer long our hands set the table, washed dishes, 
swept up crumbs, dusted chairs, scoured knives ; our 
feet ran of errands, besides the usual complement of 
chores in the barn. ... — Star Papers, 



SLEEPING ON THE CARSA 

... In the cars, stretching one's self out for balmy 
sleep, means, curling one's self up like a cat in a corner. 
Short limbs are a luxury when a man sleeps by the square 
inch. First, you lie down by the right side, against the 
window, till a stitch in your side, worming its way through 
your uneasy dream, like an awl, leads you to reverse your 
position. As you lean on the inside end of your seat, the 
conductor knocks your hat off, or uses your head as a 
support to his steps as he sways along the rocking pas- 
sage. At length, with a gToan which expresses the very 
feeling of every bone and muscle and individual organ in 
your body, you try to sit upright, and to sleep erect. But 
erect sleep is perilous, even when it is i30ssible. You 
nod and pitch, you collapse and condense, and finally 
settle down in a promiscuous heap, wishing that you 

1 From an account of a Weatern lecturing-tiip, before the era of eleep- 
Ing-cars. 



152 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. 

were a squirrel or a kitten, and curiously remembering 
dogs that could convolute on a mat, and birds that could 
tuck their head under their wings, and draw their feet 
and legs up under their feathers. O that I were round, 
like a marble, and could be rid of protruding members I 

But such slumberous philosophy and somnolent yearn- 
ings for circular shapes die out as you sink again into a 
lethargy, until the scream of the whistle, the grinding of 
the brakes, the concussions and jerks, arouse you to the 
fact that you are stopping to wood and water. . . . 

Look for a moment at the grotesque appearance of a 
car full of sleeping and sleepless wretches. What per- 
suasion could induce that pompous little man, bald- 
headed, round-faced, and rubicund, to put himself into 
such a ludicrous attitude if he were awake ? His feet 
sprawled forth, his body half sunk sideways, his head 
lolling back, his mouth wide open like a cannon ! His 
good dame by his side looks like a bag of clothes, thrown 
loosely into a corner till the next morning. There sits a 
sandy-haired man, thin-visaged, keen-eyed, as still as if 
he were asleep, but as wide awake and perpendicular as 
if he were a lighthouse. By contrast everybod}^ looks ten 
times sleepier than before, after you have looked at him. 
At length the long nightmare wears itself out. Color 
begins to come into the cheeks of the morning. The air 
smells fresher. Birds are seen, and might be heard, if 
the huge Bird of Speed that whirls you along were not 
so noisy. — Staii Papeks : The Wanderings of a Star. 



CLIMBING. 153 



CLIMBING. 



Shall I climb this ailanthus-tree to get a stick ? I 
would in a minute if it were only in the country. That's 
another objection to a city life. Nobody is surprised ia 
the country to see a man up a tree. But in a city, a gen- 
tlemanly person making his way up into a tree would 
have a motley crowd around him in a jiffy. And no 
wonder, come to think of it ! The act of climbing is one 
of adroitness rather than of gracefulness. First, a jump 
and a good hug with the arms. Then, drawing up the 
legs, the knees clasp each side of the tree, the feet touch- 
ing each other at a point that would be intersected by a 
line drawn through the spine and extended. You are in 
posture. You resemble a frog drawn together for a spring, 
and set up endways. Next, you straighten up, and raise 
your arms a ring higher. Then holding fast by them, 
like an inch- worm, you bring on the other half After 
two or three jerks, you will begin to put one leg around 
the tree, so that the calf shall clasp the back side, and 
the shin scrape itself on the other. And as you go up, 
so do the legs of your pantaloons, which, at ten feet, are 
corrugated around your knees in a manner that will give 
your skin and the bark of the tree a fair chance to see 
which is toughest. And about this time it is a curious 
fact that most men begin to quirl their tongue out of the 
corners of their mouths, as if that were a great help to 
them. Now, I decline doing all this in a city, with police- 



154 BEECnER AS A HUMORIST. 

men musing whether I am to be arrested for insanity, and 
my neighbors laughing, and boys cheering me, and sun- 
dry unsavory jests broken on me, — not even for a slick 
•will I so expose myself. — Erjes and Ears. 



NUTTING: ITS JOYS AND DISASTERS. 

" I'll tell ye what," said Deacon Marble, quite in the 
spirit of a boy, "I'll stump you, Trowbridge, to try it. 
I'll give you that big tree with low branches, and I'll 
take that slim one — and beat you." 

They soon pulled off their coats, and assailed their 
respective trees. Good Deacon Trowbridge, when his 
phlegmatic natm-e was thoroughly aroused, was a man of 
great strength. He took a hug at the tree such as a bear 
might have given ; and, at first, it seemed as if he were 
going to succeed. But each hoist grew slower; and, 
though cheered by Hiram, it was doubtful if he could 
reach the limb just above his head. If each jerk upward 
had carried his body up as fast as it did the leg of his 
pantaloons, he would soon have mounted the coveted 
branch. At length he got hold of it, but no more could 
he do. It was too high for him to let go and jump ; and 
as to getting any higher, it was out of the question. The 
poor man seemed in a wof ul plight ; but Hiram, equal to 
every emergency, had procured a rail, and, planting it 
under his foot, eased him dowu safely to the ground. 



NUTTING. 155 

]\Ieaiiwhile, Deacon INIarble, slim and nervous, had gone 
up his way like a squirrel. Already he was seeking out 
the topmost boughs, and rattling down the chestnuts in 
a perfect shower. 

The shouts of merriment soon di'ew many to this 
rather unusual scene, and, among others, the deacons' 
wives. Sirs. Trowbridge gave way to unrestrained 
laughter. She was a natural laugher. She laughed 
with her mouth, her ey«s, her whole face, with her voice 
and all her body. It was no silvery trickle, but a gener- 
ous tide that set in strongly, filled every indentation 
along the sliore, and plashed up in spray all the more, if 
any obstacle sought to stay it. 

" Well, Trowbridge," — and then, like a child with the 
whooping-cough, she gave way to a paroxysm of laughter, 
— "I should as soon" — and again she was swept away 
from her remark, like one carried out from shore by 
a refluent wave — "I should as soon expect'' — the 
words were drowned in a laugh — " to see " ..." to see ' 
. . . "abut — " at which she fairly seemed to dissolve, 
and could no longer hold herself up, " a butter tub climb 
a tree ! " 

Far other were the emotions which filled the soul of 
Polly Marble when she beheld the scene. A fire blazed 
behind her spectacles. Though she was infirm in limb, 
the weakness had in no respect reached her head, every 
inembei of which was active. At first she seemed unable 
to utter her amazement. At length she gained relief : — 



156 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. 

"Deacon Marble, j'ou d better come down! An old 
man like you a courtin' death in the top of them trees 
ought to be ashamed of himself! It ain't decent.'' 

Then, turning to those around her, she expressed her- 
self thus : — 

" Wal, Hiram, I dew hope you're satisfied at last. 
You're always huntin' after mischief, and now you've got 
it. To think oft! One deacon a pufRn' and red on the 
ground, and the other up in the tree-top ! No, it's no 
laughin' matter ! It's a sin and a shame, and I'm sur- 
prised that anybody should laugh at such levity and 
folly," giving poor Mrs. Trowbridge a look of reproof, 
that ought to have sobered her, but which, in fact, served 
to renew her agony of laughing, for she palpitated, and 
held on to her sides, and gasped, " Oh, I shall die — with 
• — laughing — dew stop ! " 

Turning to her husband, Mrs. Marble began expostu- 
lating with him. 

"Deacon Mai'ble, if you have any respect for me, or 
for yourself, — and I don't think you have a speck, — 
you'll come down ! Everybody's laughin' at you. You're 
a sight to behold! It's a wicked thing, and agin' natur', 
for an old man like you to think he's a boy, and caper 
about in the trees. If the Lord had meant you to-be a 
squirrel, he'd a made you so ! " 

" Don't, Polly, don't. I'm comin' down. Just look 
here : I want to tell you somethin' I " 

Incautious Polly ! Will you never learn the deceitful- 



MID-OCTOBER DAYS. 157 

ness of that husband of yours ? She ventures under the 
tree to hear what he has to say, just as he gives a rousing- 
shake to the branch on which he was lying. Down came 
the chestnuts, and down came the chestnutbuiTsI Tliey 
rattled on her bonnet, they pattered on her shoulders, 
and one burr — a frivolous burr, given to levity — 
struck her new spectacles, and knocked them quite out 
of symmetry. 

The nimble deacon was soon on the ground, and would 
fain have left the impression on his spouse that it was 
merely the act of getting off the limb to come down that 
brought upon her the chestnuts. Hiram was in ecstasy. 

" Isn't the deacon cute? Oh, what a politician he'd a 
made, if he'd only kept out of the church, and away from 
religion 1 " — Norwood. 



MID-OCTOBER DAYS. 

Our old Shanghai steps up with a pert " How do-ye- 
do-sir? " cocking his eye one-sidedly at j'ou, and uttering 
certain nondescript guttural sounds He walks off croon- 
ing to himself and his dames. It is all still again. There 
are no flies now to buzz in the air There is not wind 
enough to quiver a hanging straw, or to pipe a leaf-dance 
along the fence. You fall into some sweet fancy that 
inhabits silence, when all at once, with a tremendous 
vociferation, out flies a hen from over your head, with au 



158 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. 

outi'ageous noise, clattering away as if you had been 
throwing stones at her, or abusing her beyond endurance. 
The old Shanghai takes up the case, and the whole mob 
of hens join the outcry. The whole neighborhood is 
raised, and distant roosters from far-olf farms echo the 
shrill complaints. Aa egg is all very well in its wa}', 
but we never could see any justification for such vocifer- 
ous cackling. Every hen in the crowd is as much 
excited as if she had performed the deed herself. And 
the cock informs the whole region round about that 
there never was so smart a crowd of hens as he leads. 

Nothing seems so aimless and simple as a hen. She 
usually goes about in a vague and straggling manner, 
articulating to herself cacophonous remarks upon various 
topics. The greatest event in a hen's life is compound, 
being made up of an egg and a cackle. Then only she 
shows enthusiasm when she descends from the nesi of 
duty, and proclaims her achievement. If you chase her, 
she runs cackling • if you pelt her with stones, she 
streams through the air cackling all abroad, till the 
impulse has run out, when she subsides quietly into a 
silly, gadding hen. Now and then an eccentric hen may 
be found stepping quite beyond the limits of hen-pro- 
priety. One such has persisted in laying her daily egg 
in the house. She would steal noiselessly in at the opeu 
door, walk up-stairs, and leave a plump egg upon the 
children's bed. The next day she would honor the sofa. 
On one occasion she selected my writing-table, and, 



DOORS. 159 

scratching my papers about, left her card, that I might 
not blame the children or servants for scattering my 
manuscripts. Her persistent determination was amus- 
ing. One sabbath morning we drove her out of the 
second-story window, then again from the front hall. 
In a few moments she was heard behind the house; and, 
on looking out the window, she was just disappearing 
into the bed-room window on the ground-floor! Word 
was given ; but, befoi'e any one could reach the place, 
she had bolted out of the window with victorious cackle, 
and her white, warm egg lay upon the lounge. I pro- 
posed to open the pantry-window, set the egg dish within 
her reach, and let her put them up herself ; but those in 
authority would not permit such a deviation from pro- 
priety. Such a breed of hens could never be popular 
with the boys. It would spoil that glorious sport of 
hunting hens' nests. ... — Star Papers. 



DOORS. 



The hall of a dwelling gives you the first impressions. 
Sometimes on entering, you fear that by some mistake 
you have got into a clothes-closet ; at others, you enter 
upon a space so small that it is only by a dexterous 
interchange of civilities between yourself and the door 
that you can get in or the door be shut. In some halls, 
so called, a man sees a pair of corkscrew stairs coming 



160 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

right down upon him, and fears lest by sorae jugglery 
he be seized and extracted like a cork into some upper 
space Often the doors are so arranged that what with 
the shutting of the outside door, and the opening of 
inside ones, the timid stranger stands a chance of being 
impaled on the latch, or flapped front and rear ; for 
vigorous springs attaclied to the doors work with such 
nimbleness that one needs to be expert, or, having 
opened the door, before he can dash through, it will 
spring back on him with a " Now-I've-got-you " air quite 
alarming. 

Such houses seldom remit their torments here. There 
is an exquisite symmetry in all the interior adaptations. 
You finish your visit, and rise to depart, taking the door 
most likely to let you out, and find yourself walking into 
a sweetmeat closet 1 

A young beau, having acquitted himself well of the 
last critical sentences, and executed a half backward and 
wholly awkward march toward the door, with ineffable 
satisfaction, opens and steps into the china-closet! The 
little girls giggle ; the little boys laugh out ; the young 
ladies are confused, and the beau still more so. But, 
what if it had been the cellar-door? On one occasion, 
visiting a thrifty friend whose dining-room and sitting- 
room were one, I came near descending headlong into 
his cellar, which, for convenience probably, opened into 
the dining-room. I once saw three like and equal doors 
in a sitting-room. The one was the true door of 



MODERN CONVENIENCES. 161 

departure ; the next, the cellar ; and the third, a bed- 
room. There was only one chance in three for a stran- 
ger. — Norwood. 



MODERN CONVENIENCES. 

There are many persons who suppose that people 
who live in first-class houses, with all the modern 
improvements, must, of course, be much puffed up, and 
that they become quite grand in their own eyes. . . . 

Let a little preliminary exultation of a new man in a 
new place be forgiven, ye who are now established I 
Remember your own household fervor on first setting 
up, while we recount our economic ]oj, and anticipations 
of modern conveniences that would take away all human 
care, and speed life upon a down-hill path, where it was 
to be easier to move than to stand still i Every thing was 
admirable ! The attic had within it a tank so large as 
better to be called a reservoir, Down from it ran the 
serviceable pipes to every part of the dwelling. Each 
chamber had its invisible water-maid in the wall, ready 
to spring the floods upon you by the mere turn of your 
hand • then the bath-room, with tub, douche, shower, 
and, indeed, various and universal squirt, — up, down, 
and promiscuous. The kitchen, too, — the tubs with 
water waiting to leap into them ; the long cylinder by the 
side of the fire, as if the range had its baby wrapped up, 
and set perpendicular in the corner to nurse. But 



162 BEECH ER AS A UU MORI ST. 

greatest of all admirations was the furnace ! This, too, 
was interframed with the attic-tank ; for it was a hot- 
water furnace. For a time this was our peculiar pride. 
The water flowed down into a system of coiled tubes, 
which were connected witli the boiler surrounding the 
fuinace-fire. The idea was, when the water got as hot 
as it could well bear, that it should frisk out of one end 
of the boiler into the pipes, and round through the whole 
system, and come back into the other end cooled off. 
Thus a complete arterial system was established, — the 
boiler being the heart, the water the blood, the pipes at 
the hot end the arteries, and the return-pipes at the cool 
end the veins, — the whole enclosed in a brick chamber, 
from which the air warmed by this liquid heat was 
given off to the dwelling. It was a day of great glory 
when we thought the chill in the air required a fire in 
the furnace. Tlie fact was that we wanted to play with 
our pet, and were half vexed with the old conservative 
thermometer, that would not come down, and admit 
that it was cold enough for a fire. However, we do not 
recollect ever afterwards to have been so eager. 

In the first place, we never could raise enough heat to 
change the air in the house more than from cold to chill. 
We piled in the coal, and watched the thermometer; ran 
down for coal again, and ran back to watch the ther- 
mometer. We brought home coal, exchanged glances 
over the bill with the consulting partner, and made silent 
estimates of the expenses of the whole wintei', if this 



MODERN CONVENIENCES. 163 

were but the beginning. But there was the old red 
dragon in the cellar devouring coal remorselessly, with 
his long iron tail folded and coiled in the furnace-cham- 
ber without heat. Tlius, for a series of weeks, we fired 
off the furnace in the cellar at the thermometer in the 
parlor, and never hit. 

But we did accomplish other things. Once the fire 
was driven so hard that steam began to form and rumble 
and blow off, very innocently ; but the girls did not know 
that, and took to their heels for fear of being blown up. 
When the cause was discovered, the remedy was not easy ; 
for the furnace bottom was immovable, and the fire could 
not be let down. But our Joan of Ai-c assailed the 
enemy in his own camp, and threw a bucket of water 
into the fire. This produced several effects : it put out 
the fire ; it also put out so much gas, steam, and ashes, 
that the maiden was quite put out also. And more than 
ail, it cracked the boiler. But this we did not know till 
some time afterwards. There were a few days of com- 
parative rest. The weather was cold out of doors and 
cold within. It was soon reported that one of the pipes 
was stopped up in the chamber, for the water would not 
flow. The plumber was sent for. He was already well 
acquainted with the way of the house. He brought upon 
himself a laugh of ridicule, by suggesting that the water 
had given out in the tank. Water given out? We 
turned inwardly pale behind the outward red of laugh- 
ing. We thought we had a pocket ocean up-stairs: up 



164 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. 

we marched, and peered down into the dirty bottom of an 
emptied tank. Alas! the whole house was symmetrically 
connected. Everything depended upon this tank, — the 
furnace in the cellar, the range in the kitchen, the laun- 
dry department : all the washing apparatus of the cham- 
bers ; the convenient china-closet sink, where things were 
to be washed without going down-stairs ; the entry-closets, 
and almost evex-y thing else, except the door-bell, — were 
made to go by water ; and now the universal motive- 
power was gone ! 

A new .system of conveniences was now developed. Wo 
stationed an Irish engine at the force-pump to throw up 
water into the tank from the street-cistern. Blessings 
be on that cistern in the street ! No man knew how 
deep that was. And .so we limped along for a few days. 
Meanwhile, the furnace having been examined, the secret 
of all this trouble was detected. The life-blood of the 
house had been oozing and flowing away through this 
furnace. How much would it cost to repair it? More 
money than a hot-air furnace would cost, and half more 
than that. So we determined to clear out 'the pet. Alas 
(again), how we fondled the favorite at first, and how 
contemptuously we kicked it at last ! . . . 

But, oh the changing ! It was mid-winter. The mild 
weather took this chance to go South, and gg^ in its 
place the niggardliest fellow that ever stood sentinel in 
Kamtschatka. The cellar was divided from the kitchen 
in pai"t by this furnace. For two or three weeks they 



MODERN CONVENIENCES. 165 

were chiselling the tubes apart, and getting the rubbish 
out of the way, — masons, tenders, iron-men, old iron 
and new iron, tin pipes, carpenters, and new aii"-boxes, 
girls and dinner, the Irishman wheezing at the pump, — 
all mixed in such confusion, that language under the 
tower of Babel was a euphonious literature in compari- 
son. Sometimes, as we walked out, our good and loving 
deacons, in a delicate way, would warn us of the danger 
of being puffed up with the pride of a stylish house ! 

At length, after nearly six weeks of the coldest 
weather of the season, the new furnace took charge of 
the house. Water returned to the attic. The girls no 
longer dreaded being blown up by the boiler at the 
range. But the report came up that the sinks were 
stopped. After investigation, the kitchen floor must be 
ripped up, the great waste-pipe reached by digging, and 
laid open. Broken tumblers, plates, and cups stopped up 
the pipes. Another week for this. . . . 

There was a grand arrangement of bells at our front- 
door which seldom failed to make everybody outside 
mad because they would not ring, or everybody inside 
mad because they rung so furiously. The contrivance 
was, that two bells should be rung by one wire, — a com- 
mon bell in the servant's entry, and a gong in the upper 
story. The bell-train was so heavy to draw, that it never 
operated till the man got angry, and pulled with the 
strength of an ox. But then it went off with such a 
crash and jingle, that one would think a baud of music 



166 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

witli all its cymbals had fallen through the skylight 
down into the entry. Thus, women, children, and modest 
men seldom got in, and sturdy beggars had it all their 
own way. It was quite edifying to see experiments per- 
formed on that bell. A man would first give a modest 
pull, and then reflect what he was about to say. No 
one coming, he gave a longer pull, and returned to wait- 
ing and meditation. A third pull was the preface to 
stepping back, surveying the windows, looking into the 
area, when, seeing signs of unquestionable habitation, he 
returns with flushed face to the bell ; — now for it ! He 
pulls as if he held a line by the side of a river with a 
thirty pound salmon on it ; while all the bells go off, up 
and down, till the house seemed full of bells. Things 
are not mended when he finds the gentleman of the house 
is not at home ! We fear that much grace has been lost 
at that front-door. 

In the midst of these luxuries of a first-class house, 
we sometimes would look wistfully out of the window, 
tempted to envy the unconscious happiness of our two- 
story neighbors. They had no conveniences, and were at 
peace ; while we had all manner of conveniences, that 
drove us up and down stairs, — now to keep the flood 
out, and then to bring it in ; now to raise a heat, then to 
keep off a conflagration ; so that we were but little better 
off at home than are those innocently insane people, who 
leave home every summer, and go into the country to 
take care of twenty trunks for two months. But the 



A HOUSEKEEPING EXPERIENCE. 167 

cruellest thing of all, as we stood at the window, was 
the pious looks of passers-by, who seemed to say with 
their eyes, " A man cannot expect much grace that lives 
in such a fine house." 

It has certainly been a means of grace to us ! Never 
such a field for patience, such humbling of expectations 
and high looks. If it would not seem like trifling with 
serious subjects, when asked how one might attain to 
perfection, we should advise him to buy a first-class 
house with modern improvements, and live in it for a 
year. If that did not fit him foi" translation, he might 
well despair" of any chance. — Ears and Eyes. 



A HOUSEKEEPING EXPERIENCE. 

Men are naturally either proud or conceited, and some- 
times both. This appears in many things, but in noth- 
ing more than in the supercilious airs in which they 
indulge about housekeeping. Every well-bred woman has 
had occasion to lament the ignorance in which men live, 
without shame or self-reproach, of the commonest ele- 
ments of domestic economy. How often does the skilful 
wife lecture the discontented husband about the impossi- 
bility of getting a breakfast in ten minutes, or of always 
having things up to an imaginary perfection ; or of doing 
as well on washing-days, or when the cook is sick, or has 
broken her temperance pledge, or when there has been 



168 BE EC HER AS A HUMORIST. 

an insurrection among the help! Only the constant 
reminders of the excellent women at the head of the 
bureau of domestic affairs can keep men from presump- 
tuous remarks and ignorant complaints. It would be 
well if men could sometimes be left to do their own 
work. We have an experience to relate. 

Our summer vacation was ended; but the family were 
to remain in the country until the frost opened chestnut- 
buri's, and nipped the boys' fingers. We concluded to 
board ourselves for the day or two. It was Saturday. 
We began to reflect upon the stores to be laid in for Sun- 
day, and the method of preparing them. We have a 
little gas stove, invaluable for sickness, for pet suppers, 
and for returned gentlemen disposed to make their own 
tea. With it we could boil and bake. To broil was 
beyond its skill — or, at any rate, beyond our knowledge 
of its capacity. We rummaged the shops, and alighted 
upon a gas-broiler, to be described hereafter. 

We proceeded next to our grocer's, ordered six canta- 
loupes, as many tomatoes, and bread. On reaching 
home, it occurred to us that butter was sometimes used 
with bread, and that had been forgotten. We went 
back for it, and also procured half a dozen eggs. On 
reflecting how the eggs were to be eaten, pepper and salt 
came to mind ; and not a particle of either could we find 
in the well-cleaned caster. We looked into the store- 
closet, behind all the bottles, tore a little hole in every 
paper package, found sage, summer-savory, catnip, empty 



A HOUSEKEEPING EXPERIENCE. 169 

spice-boxes, salt-bags used for corks, and nests of boxes 
of all sizes, some with a smell of allspice, some with 
odor of cinnamon, and others fragrant of nutmegs, gin- 
ger, and cloves; but no salt, — pepper likewise. After 
wasting time in order to save it, back we go a third time 
to the grocer for salt and pepper. A few crackers, also, 
and a few herrings. 

Next, we reflected upon the proper elements of a soli- 
tary gentleman's dinner. Souj) was out of the question ; 
roast, boiled, and fricassee were rejected ; fowls and fish 
were marked out ; and only porter-house steak and 
mutton-chop remain. The quantity staggered us a little. 
But, to err on the side opposite famine, we ordered two 
beefsteaks and five pounds of mutton-chop. (Let the 
sequel be noted) As there was nobody in the house to 
receive them, we raced home to 'tend the door ! We 
waited a full hour ; and when at length the things came 
in, our patience had gone out. 

Next, we found that coffee must be bought, then tea 
(English breakfast-tea, of coui-se, real Souchong, — the 
only tea of thorough refinement, green teas being for 
unlearned drinkers). These we brought home in our 
own hands. At lengtli our labors of preparation seemed 
over, and we began to contemplate results, — when it 
flashed upon us that there was neither milk nor sugar in 
the house ! These caused another journey. AVe hunted 
up a kitchen knife and fork ; for every available instru- 
ment had been carried away, and the silver was all locked 



170 BEECnER AB A HUMORIST. 

up in somebody's safe. Thus, nothing was left for bur- 
glars, and — nothing for us. In this round of investiga- 
tion we gained an acquaintance with our own house 
which forty years of connnon life would not bestow. 
We found out all about the sideboard, its spoon-drawer, 
its napkin-drawer, its closet, and that secret drawer on 
each side, so cunningly ari-anged that no thief would ever 
suspect its presence until he found it out. We climbed 
to the top shelves of the store-closet, saw fragments of 
dishes — various old acquaintances that disappeared long 
time ago. We got down on our knees to look into 
lower closets tucked in under suites of drawers, and we 
mounted up on barrels to j)eer into high nooks ; and in 
one case, the barrel playing us a mean trick, we came 
down both sooner and faster than we had intended. 

But how shall we describe our experiences when all 
these prejiarations resulted in an actual meal ? A long, 
flexible tube was brought from the central gas-fixture, 
and connected with the pet stove. To boil the water for 
tea or coffee was easy. But we had forgotten just how 
much tea should be put in for a drawing. And the quan- 
tity was certainly enough ! We diluted, and diluted, and 
were prodigal of milk and sugar, without being able to 
cover the pi'odigious bitterness of the draught. 

But this was all commonplace compared with our meat- 
history. The broiler was very much like two iron pot- 
lids soldered together, with a hollow handle attached. 
The gas came through the handle into the space between ; 



A TIOUSEKEErrNG EXPERIENCE. 171 

and the lower section being pei-forated with a multitude 
of gas-holes, when gas was let on, the lower surface was 
covered with blue jets. The meat being placed on a tin 
dish, this blazing cover was placed on proper supports 
just over it, and shot its heat downwards, It is a capital 
contrivance. The juice and the odor attempting to 
escape were driven back into the meat ; and in our own 
case, such was the force of repression, that they were 
driven out of the plate, and over on to the dining-i'oom 
carpet (for all our exploits took place there). Just as 
the meat began to sizzle and splutter, and while we were 
gazing delightfully at the process, the tube slipped off 
the handle, the flame went out very suddenly over the 
meat, but not till the escaping gas from the liberated 
tube had caught fire, and shot a flame across our hands, 
that caused us to drop broiler, knife, and every thing 
else with astonishing celerity. We had no idea before 
how spry we could be. The evil was soon i-epaired, but 
only to play off again the same trick, till we held tlie tube 
on to the broiler with one hand, and manipulated the 
meat with the other. We salted it, we peppered it, we 
turned it twice, the first time on to the floor, the next time 
on to the dish, but with the same side up. The fork was 
a four-pronger. It could not get hold, or only just so far 
as was needful to effect a deception and a disaster. At 
length we put out the gas, took both hands, and trium- 
phantly reversed the obdurate steak. 

The bread was baker's. The tea we have spoken of. 



172 BEECH ER AS A nUMORIST. 

Tlie meat was serviceable. We could neither cut it nor 
chew it. The tomatoes were good. The melons were 
not. But the whole dinner agreed with our theory of 
moderation in appetite ; and the satisfaction which we 
lacked iu eating, we sought to gain by profitable medita- 
tions. 

Facilis descensus Averni; sed revocare gradum, etc., — 
" It is easy to get dinner, but to wash up the things, this 
is the burden and toil ! " Virgil never spoke a truer 
word. 

The water was hot. We found it out the moment we 
put our hand in the dish. It was the same hand that 
the gas had flamed on. We reflected on the difference 
between dry heat and moist hotness. 

We could find no dish cloth. The grease would not 
come off the plates. There was no soap. We rubbed 
with our hand, which only gave the grease a circular 
form on the plates At length we got a newspaper, and, 
by vigorous rubbing, got the ware into a presentable 
condition. The tea-cups were better served. We found 
a napkin on the bottom of the spoon-drawer. It was a 
mercy ! 

There was no swill-bucket, and nowhere to throw the 
slops, and nobody that came for these superfluities in 
summer. The melon-rinds, the tomato fragments, the in- 
exorable meat-scraps, and the unmentionable sundries of 
a man's cooking, were heaped into the dish-pan. There 
they stood. Another newspaper served to rub down the 



BOOK-BUYING. 173 

table. It was our last solitary meal. A week after- 
wards the fragments were found standing on the table 
where we had left them : the lamb-chops we had left and 
forgotten in the cupboard, and they had a way of making 
their presence and exigencies known. Indeed, our whole 
procedure in this case met with the disapprobation of the 
powers that be, nor can we say that they exactly suited 
us. 

But we have now a profound sense of a man's depend- 
ence on women for domestic comfort. Instead of think- 
ing that housekeeping is easy, — a mere nothing, — we 
admire and revere the genius that conducts so intricate a 
campaign as must be every single day's housekeeping — 
Eyes and Ears. 



BOOK-BUYING. 



No subtle manager or broker ever saw through a 
maze of financial embarrassments half so quick as 
a poor book-buyer sees his way clear to pay for what 
he must have. lie promises with himself marvels of 
retrenchment : he will eat less, or less costly viands, 
that he may buy more food for the mind. He will take 
an extra patch, and go on with his raiment another 
year, and buy books instead of coats. Yea, he will 
write books, that he may buy books. He will lecture, 
teach, trade : he will do any honest thing for money to 
buy books! The appetite is insatiable. Feeding does 



174 BE EC HER AS A HUMOR /ST. 

not satisfy it. It rages by the fuel which is put upon 
it. As a hungry man eats first, and pays afterwai-d, so 
the book-buyer purchases, and then works at the debt 
afterward. This paying is ratlier medicinal. It cui-es 
for a time. But a relapse takes place. The same long- 
ing, the same promises of self-denial. He promises him- 
self to put spurs on both heels of his industry; and 
then, besides all this, he will somehow get along when the 
time for payment comes ! Ah ! this Somehow ! That 
word is as big as a whole world, and is stuffed with all 
the vagaries and fantasies that Fancy ever bred upon 
Hope. And yet, is there not some comfort in bujdng 
books, to be paid for? We have heard of a sot, who 
wished his neck as long as the worm of a still, that 
he might so much the longer enjoy the flavor of the 
draught ! Thus, it is a prolonged excitement of pur- 
chase, if you feel for six months in a slight doubt 
whether the book is honestly your own or not. Had 
you paid down, tliat would have been the end of it. 
There would have been no affectionate and beseeching 
look of your books at you, every time you saw them, 
saying, as plain as a book's eyes can say, " Do not let 
me be taken from you." . . . 

Only the other day we heard it said somewhere, 
" Why, how good you have been lately I I am really 
afraid that you have been carrying on mischief secretly." 
Our heart smote us. It was a fact. That very day 
we had bought a few books which we "could not do 



THE GOOD OF DISORDER. 175 

without." Aftei- a while, you can bring out one volume, 
accidentally, and leave it on the table. '' Why, my dear, 
wlial a beautiful book ! Where (ltd you borrow it?" 

You glance over the newspaper, with the quietest tone 
you can command. 

" That ? oh ! that is m«ne. Have you not seen it befoi-e ? 
It has been in the house these two months ; " and you 
rush on with anecdote and incident, and point out the 
binding, and tliat peculiar trick of gilding, and every 
thing else you can think of ; but it will not do You 
cannot rub out that roguish, arithmetical smile. People 
may talk about the equality of the sexes I They are not 
equal. The silent smile of a sensible, loving woman 
will vanquish ten men. Of course you repent — and in 
time form a habit of repeating. — Slur Papeis. 



THE GOOD OF DISORDER. 

We spoke of bureaus. There is our own, for instance. 
It is a moderately good one, with a movable top, and a 
looking-glass attached. Our way of arranging is, to put 
every thing down on the top, just as it comes. Hers is 
just the other way. 

We treat it as we should the globe, and leave things 
just as they dropped. Books, combs, and brushes, a fish- 
ing-reel, a pamphlet, matches and lozenges, cologne and 
troches, a battle-hymn and letters, watch-cases and rib- 



176 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

bons. Then one would know where to look if any thing 
were missing. Alas ! order steps up the moment we leave, 
and this beauteous disorder vanishes I 

It is distressing to every tender feeling of taste to open 
the first drawer. All is adjusted, nothing left to the im- 
agination. Every lace smooth, every one folded, flat, 
regular. So it will be to-morrow, so next week, and to 
the end. 

The next drawer is mine. There repose the snow-white 
shirts, the pile of handkerchiefs; and they repose like 
Egyptian dead, in rows and shelf-like order. Once in a 
while we thrust in a genuine touch of nature, that is 
said to make*kll men kin ; but a flat-iron does not take a 
wrinkle out of linen quicker than the order does out of 
the drawer. And so it is with the next, and the next. 
So it is with the closet, with parlor, and entries. The 
same rectangular fate presides in parlor and dining-room. 

Nay, it stealthily creeps into the very study. Let us, 
in a moment rash with desperation, say our soul's faith 
(though it be heresy) that no housekeeper — fore-ordained 
housekeeper — has any rights in a study. Here are we 
this morning, just returned after four days' absence. 
We left this room a paradise, we find it a purgatory. 
Our table was blossoming all over with a luxuriant and 
tangled abundance of letters, papers, scraps from news- 
papers, books, and books on books. It was a journal. 
Each day's deposit for weeks was there, almost with the 
regularity of geological strata. We could go back as in 



THE GOOD OF DISORDER. 177 

a register, and recall the topics of each several day, until 
memory failed, and the lower strata of papers, the very 
primitive formations, went back to dim and remote times 
inexplorable. Like an ouion or tulip bulb, the table was 
constructed in layers. Fatal absence I Misplaced confi- 
dence 1 We returned to find every thing death-struck. 
All was order ! Our articles sorted, our letters filed, our 
scraps classified ; our pens collected and huddled like raw 
recruits, in awkward squads; the scissors, the knife, the 
pins, the ink, the mucilage, standing round like officers 
dressed for a parade day. A month will not suffice to 
bring back again the admired disorder, the graceful 
melange. 

And then the books ! . . . 

But, ah, the days are coming ! But seven days is it to 
spring ! Then in one more month, and all our ills will 
be healed. We shall send everybody to the country. 
We shall be sole monarch. Then, descending, we shall 
overturn the despotism of the parlors, and bring to the 
solitude of the house the joyful boon of disorder 1 We 
will forget to put any thing in its place The sofa shall 
sprout with strange things. Every corner be planted 
with new commodities. The book case door shall never 
be shut The chairs shall never have less than half a 
dozen books. Engravings shall lie in heaps Eight in 
the midst of manuscripts shall be seen bread and cheese 
and apple.q that had begun to be eaten ; the ashes shall 
heap itself in gray disorder, kindling-wood and waste 



178 BEECH ER AS A HUMORIST. 

paper shall rufHe the hearth ; and every thing see every 
thing doing what it was never expected to do. Brooms 
we hate as we do a tyrant's rod. We will expel them ! 
Dust brushes are an utter abomination. We will drive 
them forth ! At present we think it meet to submit. 
But we snuff the balmy air that tells us that the vernal 
days are coming. To us they mean more than to any- 
body else. To all they mean grass, leaves, lambs, birds, 
flowers, and odorous smell of soil and vegetation. But 
to us they mean also domestic liberty, the end of tj'ran- 
nous order, the restoration of nature to the house, the 
undisturbed reign of joyous disorder I — Eyes and Ears. 



A CANNON-BALL IN THE HAT. 

When I was a lad of thirteen years, my father re- 
moved from a country town to Boston. Nothing of all 
its sights produced upon me such an impression as the 
ships. 

But the Navy Yard in the adjoining town of Charles- 
town, separated only by Charles River from Boston, was 
my especial wonder and glory. I became familiar with 
all its marvels. I crept down to the bottom of its huge 
and dismantled ships, I climbed up to the dqcks of those 
which were building in the covered ship-houses, I watched 
the construction of its famous stone dry-dock, I ranged 
along the silent mouths of its massive cannon. 



A CANNON-BALL IN THE HAT. 179 

One day I visited some ill-constructed vaults where 
shot had been stoi-ed. The six and twelve pound shot 
were extremely tempting. I had no particular use for 
them. I am to this day puzzled to know why I coveted 
them. There was no chance in the house to roll them, 
and as little in the street. For base-ball or shinty they 
were altogether too substantial. But I was seized with 
an irresistible desire to possess one. As I had been 
well brought up, of course the first objection arose oa 
the score of stealing. But I disposed of that, with a 
patiiotic facility that ought long before this to have sent 
me to Congress, by the plea that it was no sin to steal 
from the government. Next, how should I convey the 
sliot from the yard without detection ? I tried it in my 
handkerchief. That was altogether too plain. I tried 
my jacket-pocket, but the sag and shape of that alarmed 
my fears. I tried my breeches-pocket, but the abrupt 
protuberance was worse than all. I had a good mind to 
be honest, since there was no feasible way of carrying 
it off. At length a thought struck me. Wrap a hand- 
kerchief about it, and put it in your hat. . . . 

The iron ball was accordingly swaddled with the hand- 
kerchief, and mounted on my head, and the hat shut 
over it. I emerged from the vault a little less courageous 
than was pleasant, and began my march toward the 
gate. Every step seemed a mile. Every man I met 
looked unusually hard at me. The marines evidently 
were susjoectiug my hat. Some sailors, leering, and roll- 



180 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

ing toward the ships, seemed to look me through. The 
perspiration stood all over my face as an officer came 
toward me. Now for it ! I was to be arrested, put in 
prison, cat-o'-nine-tailed, or shot for aught 1 knew. I 
wished the ball in the bottom of the sea ; but no, it was 
on the top of my head. 

By this time, too, it bad grown very heavy : I must 
have made a mistake in selecting! I meant a six- 
pounder, but I was sure it must have been a twelve- 
pounder; and before I got out of the yard, it weighed 
twenty four pounds! 1 began to fear that the stiffness 
with which I carried my neck would excite suspicion; 
and so I tried to limber up a little, which had nearly 
ruined me, for the shot took a roll around my crown in 
a manner that liked to have brought me and my hat 
to the ground. Indeed, I felt like a loaded cannon, and 
every man and every thing was like a spark trying to 
touch me off. The gate was a great way farther off 
than I ever had found it before: I seeme<l likely never 
to get there. 

And when, at length, heart-sore and head-sore, with 
my scalp well rolled, I got to the gate, all my terror 
came to a culmination as the sentinel stopped his march- 
ing, drew himself up, and, looking at me, smiled. I 

expected him to say, "O you little thievish d 1! do 

you think I do not see through you ? " — but, bless his 
heart, he only said, " Pass ! '' He did not say it twice. 
I walked a few steps farther, and then, having great 



A CANNON-BALL IN TEE HAT. 181 

faith in the bravery of my feet, I pulled my hat off 
before me, and, carrying it in that position, I whij^ped 
around the first corner, and made for the bridge with a 
speed which Flora Temple would envy. 

When I reached home, I had nothing to do with my 
shot. I did not dare show it in the liouse, nor tell 
where I got it; and, after one or two solitary rolls, I 
gave it away on the same day to a Prince-Streeter. 

But, after all, that six-pounder rolled a good deal of 
sense into my skull. I think it was the last thing that I 
ever stole (excepting a little matter of a heart, now 
and then), and it gave me a notion of the folly of 
coveting more than you can enjoy, which has made 
my whole life happier. . . . But I see men doing the 
same thing, — going into underground, dirty vaults, and 
gathering up wealth which will roll round their heads 
like my cannon-ball, and be not a whit softer because 
it is gold instead of iron, though there is not a man 
in Wall Street who will believe that. 

I have see?i a man put himself to every humiliation 
to win a proud woman who has been born above him ; 
and when he had won her, he walked all the rest of his 
life with a cannon-ball in his hat. 

I have seen young men enrich themselves by pleasures 
in the same wise way, sparing no pains, and scrupling 
at no sacrifice of principle, for the sake, at last, of 
carrying a burden which no man can bear. 

All the world are busy in striving for things that give 



182 BEECUER An A HUMORIST. 

little pleasure, and bring much care; and in my walks 
among men, I often think, there is a man stealing a 
cannon-ball; or, there's a man with a ball on his head; 
I know it by the way he walks. . . . And ten thousand 
men in New York will die this year; and as each one 
falls, his hat will come off, and out will roll an iron 
ball, which for years he has worn out his strength in 
carrying 1 — Eyes and Ears. 



THE TIIOUGHT-A-TYPE.^ 

IIartfoud, Aug. 30, 1848. 

My dear Professor, — If good resolutions were only 
letters, what voluminous epistles you would have had 
from me I Alas, that a thought-a-ti/pe could not be in- 
vented! What an advance will that be when one can 
slip a sheet of prepared paper into his hat, upon which the 
electricity of the mind shall act as the light does upon a 
photogi-aphic plate, and sally forth. Upon his return, — 
O joy ! — all that he has thought would be found trans- 
ferred to the paper ! The advantages of this new inven- 
tion promise to be so many that I hope no time will be 
lost in pi'osecuting the matter to a discovery. Thus a 
paralytic author might triumph over the infirmity of his 
hands : a mercurial head like mine might, for once, write 



' From a letter to Dr. John IT. Raymoud, at that time professor ia 
Madisou UulvyrBity, Uamiltou, N.Y. 



THE TIIOUGIIT-A-TYPE. 183 

as fast as it thought. A paper niglit-cap would give one, 
ill the morning, all his dreams: a suitable head-hook would 
register the most perfect of journals, for thus all that we 
think would go down, good and bad, — and go down just 
as it happened, a thing I suspect that is not always to be 
found in pen-made journals. Then, too, what self-knowl- 
edge might not this afford — should we believe in our own 
identity? Each evening would put a new volume into 
our hands ; for I suppose that we all tldnk at least one 
volume in a day, if all our cogitations were written. 
What a fiction it would be! — alas, the strangeness of 
fiction, and the stubborn validity of fact ! For who does 
not throw the filmy veil of self-esteem upon his life, 
through whose witching colors all looks change to a 
heightened excellence ? Who could bear to read in a 
volume at evening all the somethings and nothings, all the 
evil and good, all the frets and fancies, all the venture- 
some ranges of thinking, the vain imaginations, the 
hopes, fears, suppressed angers, involuntary opinions of 
men, and, above all, the critical thoughts which one has 
of even the best ? For who lives without great faults ? 
and who lives with habits of attention without seeing 
them? Yet to see in full print that which otherwise 
only glances through the brain, and whose trace is lost, 
— as is the stream of a meteor, — would be shocking. 

There — was I not fore-ordained to be a letter-writer ? 
For who can spin a longer yarn than this out of such a 
little lock of wool ? . . . 



184 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

[After some talk about the theological furor then at 
white-heat about Dr. Bushnell's sermons, he proceeds: — ] 

As for mj'self , I mean to go home and labor and preach 
and pray for a revival, and, if I can, to have so much to 
do within as to have no ear or heart for the storm that 
rages without. So others may blow the bellows, and turn 
the doctrines in the fire, and lay them on the anvil of con- 
troversy, and beat them with all sorts of hammers into all 
sorts of shapes ; but I shall busy myself with using the 
sword of the Lord, not in forging it. 

I shall not soon forget that gem of a visit to Hamilton. 
It is not often that every thing conspires to make a visit 
brmiful of interest without a drop being spilt to the 
ground. I look back upon it as upon a dream. It seems 
as if I had read it all in a novel, and remembered you all 
as so many sharply drawn characters. You and I were 
rambling about so much together that I think of you as 
one outside the cover of the book, a reader with me. 

[Here follows a humorous description — or "portrait- 
gallei-y," as he calls it — of the various members of the 
Hamilton circle, with other personal matter.] 

This tirade has quite put my picture-gallery in confu- 
sion, upset my frame, and spilt my paints ; yet I will 
scrape up enough to give the outlines of the Reverend 
Visitor himself, — for I have observed that all great 
painters Lave succeeded well in diawiug their own like- 



EMBODIED JOKES. 185 

nesses. Imagine, then, a tall, portly man, rather precise 
in manners, evidently reared in a school in which eti- 
quette ruled out nature, naturally taciturn, and singularly 
careful, when he does speak, to say only, and the most, 
profitable things; whose feeling has manifestly been sub- 
dued until one doubts whether he ever had much ; never 
venturing upon jests and humorous frivolities, and there- 
fore wearing a face full of premature care. It is quite 
manifest thatthis reverend divine has been saved from 
the cloister or the cave by being born one or two hundred 

years too far down the stream of time. There ! if from 

that portrait you cannot discern the original, may Heaven 
help your wits I 

But really this is too bad. I take my " corporal oath " 
that I intended no such prolix infliction when I began, 
but we slipped down the epistolary hill so easily that I 
hardly perceived the motion. Now that we are safely at 
the bottom, I will save your patience the necessity of 
further travel by blocking up the road with the name of 

Your friend (that would be), 

H. W. BEECHER. 



EMBODIED JOKES. 

Has not nature an element of the ludicrous in it ? Are 
there no creations which may be regarded as mere quizzi 
cal oddities ? What else can you make of the world-re- 



186 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

nowned Jack? Can any man look into his face without 
an irresistible temptation to laughter? Was ever any- 
thing more expressly made to be grotesque than a toad? 
What thing, of all the barbarous inventions in Chinese 
pictures, can surpass it in ridiculousness ? Did you ever 
attentively study toad life and manners ? You might do 
worse. At evening, when they begin to feel the inspira- 
tion of an evening meal, you shall find them awkwardly 
alert, and very entertaining. Their squat forms and un- 
gainly movements, the very decorous and earnest sobriety 
with which they carry themselves, the peculiar wink with 
which they seem to intimate to you that they are keeping 
up a good deal more thinking inside than you might sup- 
pose, their imperturbable and imexcitable passivity, pro- 
duce a comical result, hardly equalled by any clown. 

The bat is another jest in natural history. Its flight 
is the only redeeming feature of its ungracious form and 
manner. Even that has a capriciousness in it that savors 
of gambolling. Its voice is a squeak, its mouth a bur- 
lesque upon humanity. 

The monkey has been set apart for ridiculousness the 
world over. He is an organized sarcasm upon the human 
race, with variations multitudinous. . . . 

But who ever saw, on land or in water, a crab or a 
lobster, without being struck with their comicality ? If 
these things address themselves to a feeling of the ludi- 
crous in our minds, is it extravagant to sujipose that they 
sprung from some such thought in the Creative Mind ? 



PRANKS. 187 

It seems no more strange that God should create objects 
for mirth in the world, than that he should have placed 
the faculty of mirthfulness in the human mind. Is any 
faculty without provision for its enjoyment? Is it not 
rather to be supposed that, both in the vegetable and the 
animal kingdom, there are forms and processes which 
will never be fully appreciated until their relation to the 
feeling of miith is recognized? We do not know that 
laughing philosophers are desirable: philosophers who 
do not know how to laugh are still less likely to be com- 
plete. . . . — Eyes and Ears. 



PRANKS. 



There troop the three most roguish boys that ever made 
parents scold and laugh. They have nothing to do but 
to set each other on to mischief. They pull off buds 
from the unblossomed rose-bushes ; they pick cucumbers 
by the half-bushel that were to have been let alone ; they 
break down rare shrubbery to get whips, and instead get 
whippings ; they kill the guinea-pigs ; chase the chickens ; 
break up hen's nests ; get into the carriages and wagons, 
only to tumble out, and set all the nurses a-ranning ; they 
study every means of getting under the horses' feet, and, 
as the more dangerous act, they are fond of tickling their 
hind-legs, and pulling at their tails ; they fill the already 
fed horses with extra oats, causing the hostler to fear for 



188 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST 

his charge's health, since he refuses oats at the next 
regular feeding ; they paddle in all the mud on the prem- 
ises ; sit down in the street and fill their pockets with dirt ; 
they wet their clothes in the brook, tear them in the 
woods ; lose their caps a dozen times a day, and go bare- 
headed in the blazing sun ; they cut up every imaginable 
prank with their long-suffering nurses when meals are 
served, or when bedtime comes, or when morning brings 
the washing and dressing. They are little, nimble, com- 
pact skinfuls of ingenious, fertile, endless, untiring mis- 
chief. They stub their toes, or cut their fingers, or get 
stung, or eat some poisonous berry, seed, or root, or make 
us think that they have, which is just as bad ; they fall 
down-stairs, or eat green fruit till they are as tight as a 
drum ; and yet there is no peace to us without them, as 
there certainly is none with them. — Star Papers : The 
First Breath in the Country. 



BOYS. 

The real lives of boys are yet to be written. The 
lives of pious and good boys which enrich the catalogues 
of great publishing societies resemble a real boy's life 
about as nmch as a chicken, picked and larded, upon a 
spit, and ready for delicious eating, resembles a free 
fowl in the fields. With a few exceptions they are 
impossible boys, with incredible goodness. A man's 



BOYS. 189 

experience stuffed into a little boy is simply monstrous. 
And we are soundly sceptical of this whole school of 
juvenile pate de foie gras piety. Apples that ripen long 
before their time are either diseased or worm-bitten. 

From tlie time that a babe becomes a boy until he is 
a young man, he is in an anomalous condition, for which 
there is no special place assigned in nature. They are 
always in the way. They are always doing something to 
call down rebuke. They are inquisitive as monkeys, and 
meddlesome just where you don't wish them to be. . . . 

Poor boys! What are they good for ? It is an un- 
fathomable mystery' that we come to our manhood (as 
the Israelites reach Canaan) through the wilderness of 
boyhood. They are always wanting something they 
must not have, going where they ought not to be, com- 
ing where they are not wanted, saying the most awkward 
things at the most critical times. They will tell lies, 
and, after infinite pains to teach them the obligations of 
truth, they give us the full benefit of fi'ankness and 
literalness, by blurting out before comj)any a whole 
budget of family secrets. . . . 

Who shall describe the daily battle of the hair and 
the bath, the ordeal of aprons for the table, the placing 
and moving up, and the endless task of good manners ? 
If there is one saint that ought to stand higher than 
another on the calendar, it is a patient, sweet-tempered 
children's nurse! Talk of saintship, simply because a 
man lived in a cave, and was abstemious, or because he 



190 BEECHKR AS A HUMORIST. 

died bravely at the stake What are fagots of fiery 
sticks for a few hot moments compared to those ani- 
mated fagots which consume nurses and governesses 
for months and years, to say nothing of the occasional 
variety of parental coals ! — Et/es and Ears. 



THE COUNTRY FOR BOYS. 

1 DO pity children in the city. There is no place for 
them. The streets are full of bad boys that they must 
not play with, and the house is rich in furniture that 
they must not touch. They are always in somebody's 
way, or making a noise out of the proper time, — for 
the twenty-fifth hour of the day is the only time when 
people are willing that children should be noisy. There 
is no grass in the fieldless, parkless city for their feet, no 
trees for climbing, no orchards or nut-laden trees for 
their enterprise. 

In the country, there are no ugly boys to be watched, 
no dangerous places to fall from, no bulls or wicked 
hippogriffs to chase them. They are up and fledged by 
breakfast, and then they are off in uncircumscribed 
liberty till dinner. They may go to the barn, or to 
either of three orchards, or to either of two woods, or 
to either of two springs, or to grandma's, who is the 
very genius of comfort and gingerbread to children. 
They can build all manner of structures in wet sand. 



FIRST FISniNG. 191 

or paddle in the water, and even get their feet wet, their 
clothes dirty, or their pantaloons toi'n, without being 
aught reckoned against them. They scuffle along the 
road to make a dust in the world, they chase the hens, 
hunt sly nests, build fires on the rocks in the pastures, 
and fire off Chinese crackers, until thej"- are surfeited 
with noise: they can run, wade, halloo, stub their toes, 
lie down, climb, tumble down, with or without hurting 
themselves, just as much as they please. They may 
climb in and out of wagons, sail ships in the water- 
trough at the barn, fire apples from the sharpened end 
of a limber stick, pick up baskets full of brilliant apples 
in competition with the hired men, proud of being " al- 
most men." Their hands, thank fortune, are never clean, 
their faces are tanned, their hair is tangled within five 
minutes after combing, and a button is always off some- 
where. . . . — Star Papers: Mid-October Days. 



FIRST FISHING. 

. . . On the blessed day above mentioned, a barefooted 
boy might have been seen on a June afternoon, with his 
alder-pole on his shoulder, tripping through the meadow 
where dandelions and wild geraniums were in bloom, and 
steering for the old saw-mill. As soon as the meadow was 
crossed, the fence scaled, and a descent begun, all familiar 
objects were gone, and the overpowering consciousness of 



192 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

being alone set one's imagination into a dance of fear. 
Could we find our way back ? What if a big bull should 
come out of those bushes ? What if a great big man 
should come along and carry us off ? To a six-year-old 
boy these were very serious matters, and nothing could 
have so well tested the eagerness of our purpose as pei'se- 
verance under these soul-bewildering suggestions; for 
realities in after-life are seldom so impi-essive as imagina- 
tions in early life. A'child's fears are cruel. They are 
to him the signs of absolute realities ; and he is quite 
unable to reason on them, and is helj^less to repel or to 
endure them. The fears of oui" own childhood constitute 
a chapter in mental philosophy. 

But no sooner did we see the sparkle of the water than 
our soul grew calm again and happy. 

Now, for the first time in our lives, we put on a worm. 
We threw in the hook, and trembled all over with the 
excitement ! 

The hook and bait fell upon the wrinkled water, went 
quietly down the stream, and swept in near the shore, 
where some projecting stone roofed over a little pool. 
Out of that pool our little eyes saw something dart, and 
our little hands, all a-tremble, felt something pull. In an 
instant, with a spasm of energy, we drew back the line : 
there was a flash in the air, — a wriggling flash, — and 
something smote the rocky, gravelly bank behind. Scram- 
bling up, we found a shine}- ; but, alas ! smashed to pieces. 
Soon another and another fared in like manner, and it 



THE OLD MAN'S JOURNEY. 193 

was long before we could subdue our nerves so as not to 
dash the fish to pieces. Our courage grew every moment. 
AVhat did we care if there was a bull in the bushes ! 
What if a beggar-man should come along! What if a 
great black dog should — but that thought was a little 
too serious. Black dogs were terrors not to be lightly- 
thought of, even by a six-year-old urchin who had caught 
fish — alone too ! And so, gathering up two roach and 
three shiners, we started home. Up the sloping hill we 
ran, till our father's house shone out from among the 
trees ; and then, with the dignity and nonchalance of a 
conqueror, we prepared to make a triumphal entrance. 
Since then we have fished in many a stream and lake, and 
in the deep sea, but never with half the exhilaration of 
that first joyful horn* on the Bantam. — Eyes and Ears. 



THE OLD MAN'S JOURNEY. 

For a week after this interview. Tommy Taft was 
detained in the house by the severity of the weather. 
When the skies relented, he was too weak to get about 
alone. Every week his anxiety increased to see Barton. 
Pain could not subdue his stubborn will. But no will 
could sustain the daily weakening body. It was the last 
week in February before the old man fairly took to his 
bed, and gave up all hope of seeing Cathcart before he 
died. His spirits were depressed, and his temper not the 



194 BEECIIER AS A HUMORIST. 

best. Dr. Buell, faithful to his fractious parishioner, 
still visited him from time to time, hoping that in some 
favorable hour he might cast light into his darkened 
mind. One day a knock sounded at his door. 

" Come in, — or stay out, as suits ye best," said 
Tommy. 

Dr. Buell entered 

*' Come in, Doctor. You're always at work on the old 
sinner. Really, I had a pain this morning that liked to 
let me through." 

" I hope, Taft, that you find yourself willing to depart, 
if it be God's wUl.-' 

" Well, well, as to that, Doctor, I guess when a clock 
has run down, it stops, not because it has a mind to, but 
because it can't help it ! " 

" Yet, one may have Christian resignation to events 
which he cannot control. It is a very solemn thing to 
die, Taft, and the future is dark to those who have no 
hope in the Saviour." 

"When a ship's driven in by gales, and has to make a 
harbor, it's mighty convenient to have a lighthouse ; but 
if there ain't any, why, a feller must get in the best way 
he can." 

" But there is a light. Christ is the light of the world. 
There is no need of darkness to one who trusts him." 

"That's so: that's good doctrine — sound views, no 
doubt. You was always very clear. I often said that if 
a man didn't understand you, he needn't go to meetin* 



THE OLD MAN'S JOURNEY. 195 

anywhere, for there wau't any better preachin' in the 
State." 

In short, it was plain that Taft did not mean to talk 
about his feelings with the minister. Dr. Buell was 
deeply moved with pity. The old man's pale face, his 
weakness, the nature of his disease, indicated that he 
had not long to live. He hesitated a moment, in doubt 
whether it would be worth while to suggest praying with 
the sick man, who sat propped up in bed. 

*' Taft, if it would be pleasant — if you desire it, that 
is — I shall be glad to pray with you." 

" No objection in the world ! If I was one of the elect 
I'd do it myself." 

" Is there any thing that you would like me specially 
to solicit ? " 

" If it's proper, and just the same to you, ask the Lord 
to send Barton Cathcart home, and let me see the boy 
once more afore I die." 

Tommy Taft had a large head and face. Usually there 
was a rugged and somewhat sharp expression to his 
features. But sickness had turned his face pale, his 
bushy side-locks were very gray, and his eyes peered out 
from under his brow with more than common brightness. 
He did not shut them while Doctor Buell prayed. He 
looked over the form of the kneeling minister with an 
expression in which mirth was blended with pain. It 
seemed to say, — 

" Poor fellow ! It don't take much to make you happy ! " 



19G BE EC HER AS A HUM OR /ST. 

It was very plain that Tommy did not accept any one 
as priest but Barton Cathcart, and that the only thread 
by which his rugged nature could be led was the single 
golden strand of affection. 

He grew daily weaker, and more and more crabbed. 
It was a hard task for Mother Taft. He poured out 
words like paving-stones upon her. He would agree to 
nothing, and seemed likely to go out of the world like a 
shaggy bear seeking his northern covert for hibernation. 
On the first day of JMarch it was, that Tommy Taft had 
been unquietly sleeping in the forenoon, to make up for 
a disturbed night. The little noisy clock, — that regarded 
itself as the essence of a Yankee, and ticked with immense 
alacrity, and struck in the most bustling and emphatic 
manner, — this industrious and moral clock began strik- 
ing, whir-r-r, one ; whir-r-r, iivo , whir-r-r, three . (Tommy 
jerked his head a little, as if something vexed him in 
his sleep;) whir-r-r, /our; whir-r-r, /ye; whir-r-r, s/x, 

(" Keep still, will ye ? let me alone, old woman ! d 

your medicine ! ") whir-r-r, seven ; whir-r-r, eight , (" God 
in heaven ! as sure as I live," said Tommy, rubbing his 
eyes as if to make sure that they saw aright ;) whir-r-r, 
nine; whir-r-r, ten! Then, holding out his arms with 
the simplicity of a child, his face fairly glowing with joy, 
and looking now really noble, he cried, — 

" Barton, — my boy. Barton, — I knew you wouldn't 
let the old man die, and not help him ! I knew it 1 I 
knew it 1 " 



THE OLD MAN'S JOURNEY. 197 

After the first surprise of joy subsided, Tommy pushed 
Barton from the edge of his bed. 

" Stand up, boy ; turn round ! There he is ! Now 
I'm all right. Got my pilot aboard. Sealed orders — • 
ready to sail the minnit the hawser's let go." 

After a few words about his return from the West, his 
health and prospects, the old man returned to the subject 
that seemed to lie nearest his lieart. 

" They've all had a hand at me, Barton. There's 
twenty firms in this town that is willin' to give a feller 
sailin* orders, when they see he's out'ard bound. But I 
am an old salt — I know my owners!" said Tommy, 
with an affectionate wink at Barton. 

•' O my boy, you're back agin ! it's all right now. 
Don't you let me go wrong. I want you to tell me just 
where you're goin', and I'll bear right up for that port! 
You know. Barton, I never cheated you when you was a 
boy. I took care of ye, and never told you a lie in my 
life, and never got you in a scrape. You won't cheat an 
old man now, will ye ? " 

It was all that Barton could do to maintain his self- 
possession. Tears and smiles kept company on his face. 

" My dear old Tommy, we won't part company. We're 
both bound to the same land. God will, I fervently hope, 
for Chi-ist's sake, forgive all our sins, and make us meet 
for everlasting life ! " 

'* Amen ! " roared out the old man. "Goon. You 
really believe in it ? Come hei-e, Barton, sit down on the 



198 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

edge of the bed, look me in the face, and no flummery, 
— do you really believe that there's another world ? " 

"I do. Tommy, I believe it in my very soul." 

" That's enough ! I believe it too, jest as sartain as if a 
shipmate had told me about an island I'd never seen, but 
he had. 

" Now, Barton, give me the bearin's oft. D'ye believe 
that there's a Lord that helps a poor feller to it ? " 

" I do. Christ loves me, and you, and all of us. He 
is gloi'ious in love ; and for no other reason in the world 
than because he loves to do kind things, he saves all who 
trust him." 

" He don't stand on particulars, then ? He won't rip 
up all a fellei-'s old faults, will he? — or how's that? 
Don't you ease up on me, Barton, just to please me, 
but tell me the hardest on't. I believe every word 
you say." 

Barton's own soul had travelled on the very road on 
which Tommy was now walking ; and remembering his 
own experience, and some of those wonderful crystals 
which he had dug out of the ridges of the Old Testament, 
and which he had set in his memory with even more 
feeling than before, made up in j^avt by the renewal of 
his own former experiences, he repeated to Tommy these 
words, saying to him, — 

" Tommy, if I was describing a man to you, you would 
take him to be just what I say, wouldn't you ? " 

" Sartain ! " 



THE OLD MAN'S JOURNEY. 199 

*' Well, this is God's nature. You are going toward 
him, and ought to know how to behave." 

" That's as true as the compass. Didn't I tell ye, old 
woman, when Barton came it would be plain sailin' ? " 

" ' And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, 
The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long- 
suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth. 

" ' Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and 
transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear 
the guilty ; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
children, and upon the children's children, unto the third 
and to the fourth generation.' 

" Then, again. Tommy, hear this : — 

" ' Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, 
and passeth by the transgression of the last of his heri- 
tage ? he retaineth not his anger forever, because he de- 
lighteth in mercy. 

" ' He will turn again, he will have compassion upon 
us ; he will subdue our iniquities ; and thou wilt cast all 
our sins into the depths of the sea.' " 

"Now, that's to the p'int, Barton. The Lord will 
tumble a feller's sins overboard, like rubbish, or bilge- 
water, and tlie like, when a ship is in the middle of the 
ocean ? Well, it would puzzle a feller to find 'em agin 
after that. Is that all ? I'm to report to him V " 

" Yes, Tommy : you are to report to God just as I 
should report to you if you were a ship-owner, and I were 
the captain, and had made mistakes and losses on the 



200 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

voyage. Suppose you loved me just as you do now, and 
I were to come back to you, and make a clean breast of it, 
■what would you do to me ? " 

" Do ? You know what I'd do ! I'd say — Barton, 
hold your yawp; not another word atween us. I care 
more for you than for eveiy d dollar of the cargo." 

Barton did not stop for Tommy's adjectives. 

" That's just what God says to us : ' All his transgres- 
sions that he hath committed they shall not be mentioned 
unto him.' ' Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked 
should die ? saith the Lord God.' " 

" Well, now, this is honorable ! It makes a feller feel 
mean, though. Barton, when he's treated so, and then 
thinks what sort of a feller he's been." 

Barton then read from the fifteenth chapter of Luke to 
the old man, the parable of the prodigal son. 

" Barton, would ye jest as lief do me a little favor as 
not ? " 

"What is it, Taft?" 

"Would ye mind sayin' a little prayer — for me? — 
it makes no difference, of course ; but jest a line of 
introduction in a foreign port sometimes helps a feller 
amazingly." 

Barton knelt by the bedside and prayed. Without 
reflecting at the moment on Uncle Tommy's particular 
wants, Barton was following in prayer the line of his 
own feelings ; wlien, suddenly,, he felt Tommy's finger 
gently poking his head. 



THE OLD MAN'S JOURNEY. 201 

" I say, Barton, ain't you steeriu' a p'int or two off the 
course? I don't seem to follow you." ' 

A few earnest, simple petitions followed, which Taft 
seemed to relish. 

" Lord forgive Tommy Taft's sins ! " (" Now you've 
hit it," said the old man softly.) " Prepare him for thy 
kingdom." ("Yes, and Barton too!") "May he feel 
thy love, and trust his soul in thy sacred keeping ! " 
("Ah, ha! that's it — you're in the right spot now.") 
" Give hira peace while he lives ! " (" No matter about 
that — the doctor'Il give me opium for that! go on.") 
"And, at his death, save his soul in thy kingdom, for 
Christ's sake. Amen." 

*' Amen. But didn't you coil it away rather too quick ? " 

The fact was, that Barton was not used to the office 
of public prayer, and still less to the running commenta- 
ries of Tommy Taft, which, though helpful to the old 
man, were of no assistance to Barton. 

•'Now, Barton, my boy, you've done a good thftjg. 
I've been waitin' for you all winter, and you didn't come 
a minnit too soon. I'm tired now, but I want you to 
come back to-morrow. I've got somethin' to tell you. 
I never let you know nothin' about my life, and I've a 
mind to tell you. Oh, it was a cruel shame for my uncle 
to treat me so! I might have made a man if I'd had 
half a chance. No matter. But I want to say one thing : 
Barton, when I'm gone, you won't let the old woman 
sufEer? She's had a pretty hard time of it with me. 



202 BEECHER AS A HUMORIST. 

She's like a sparrow that builds its nest in a thorn-hush. 
I knew you would. One thing more, Barton," said the 
old man, his voice sinking almost to a whisper, as if 
speaking a secret from the bottom of his soul, — " Barton, 
you know I never had much money. I never laid up 
any — couldn't. Now, you won't let me come on to the 
town for a funeral — will ye ? I should hate to be buried 
in a pine coffin, at town expense, and have folks laugh 
that didn't dare open their head to me when I was 
'round town ! And then. Barton, you'll put old Smasher 
in with me ! Of course, it ain't any matter, but I'd 
rather take my leg along, if it's all the same to other 
folks ! " 

Barton could not forbear smiling, as the old man, 
growing visibly feebler every hour, went on revealing 
traits which his sturdy pride had covered when he was 
in health. 

"And, Barton, I wish you'd let the children come 
when I'm buried. They'll come if you'll jest let 'em 
know. Always trust the children I And " — (pain here 
checked his utterance for a moment) — "and, let's see, 
what was I sayin' ? Oh, the children ! I don't want 
nothin' said. But if you'd jest as lief let the children 
sing one of their hymns, I should relish it." 

The color came suddenly to his cheek, and left as 
suddenly. He pressed his hand over his stomach, and 
leaned his head farther over on his pillow, as if to wait 
till the pang passed. It seemed long. Barton rose and 



THE OLD MAN'S JOURNEY. 203 

leaned over him. The old man opened his eyes, and, 
with a look of ineffable longing, whispered, — 

" Kiss me." 

A faint smile dwelt about his mouth : his face relaxed, 
and seemed to express happiness in its rugged features. 
But the old man was not there. Without sound of 
wings, or footfall, he had departed on his last journey I — 
Norwood. 



IKDEX. 



INDEX. 



Abolitionists, 26, 

Abuse, 28. 

Adam's Fall, 110, 111. 

Sin, 78. 
Advice, 41. 
Ambition, 55. 
Apple-eatiug, 49. 

Pie, 28. 
Appreciation, 67. 
Aptness in Teaching, 74. 

Baby Angels, 36. 
Babies, 40, 85, 87. 
Baptism, 35. 
Beautiful Ministers, 36. 
Beauty, 38, 73. 
Beer and Tobacco, 115. 
Belief, 36. 
Benevolence, 93. 
Bible- reading, 77. 



Bibliolatry, 115. 

Birds, 43. 

Blessing of Poverty, The, 21. 

Bobolink, A, 37. 

Boils, 101. 

Book-buying, 173. 

Book-keeping, 124. 

Boston, 24. 

Boy again, A, 141 

Boys, 30, 63, 188. 

A Plea for the, 145. 
Boy-punishment, 103. 
Buying Land, 60. 

Calvinism, 34. 
Cannon-ball in the Hat, 178. 
Catechism, 21. 
Cats, 30, 81. 
Caustic Aids, 68. 
Children, 24. 

207 



208 



INDEX. 



Church, The, 19. 

Decline, 114. 

Discords, 51. 

Fences, 49. 

Harmony, 97. 

Intolerance, 96. 

Life, 89. 

Membership, 113. 

Nagging, 92. 

Ordinances, 84. 

Rafts, 62. 
Churches, 59. 

and Hospitals, 
101. 
Cities, 59. 

Clergymen's Business, 65. 
Climbing, 69, 153. 
Clothes, 94, 147. 

and Money, 77. 
College-work, 82. 
Common Sense, 35. 

Lack of, 38. 
Conceit, 22, 64. 
Conscience, 33. 
Consciousness, 106. 
Conversion, 94. 
Country for Boys, The, 190. 
Creeds, 100. 



Creeds and Conduct, 101. 
Cross-bearing, 100. 
Crutches, 90. 

Dancing, 3. 
Dandelions, 70. 
Darwinism, 84. 
Deacon Marble, 120. 
Deacon Marble's Levity, 2. 
Dead Christianity, 52. 
Denominationalism, 105. 
Devil in Religion, 53. 
Devils cast out, 87. 
Differences, 112. 
Digestion and Hope, 71. 
Discipline, 39. 
Divine Judgment, 113. 
Doing and Seeing, 23. 
Doors, 159. 
Dying, 22. 
Dyspepsia, 3. 

and Grace, 69. 

Early Rising, 29. 
Ecclesiasticism, 34. 
Effort, 48. 
Eggs, 119. 
Election, 67. 



INDEX. 



■209 



Embodied Jokes, 185. 
Emotion and Action, 56. 
Emotions, 59. 
Eye-riches, 50. 

Facts, 59. 

Family Government, 132. 

Prayers, 144. 

Secrets, 37. 
Fasting, 85. 
Faults, 111. 
Feeding Eggs, 79. 
Feeling and Shouting, 90. 
First Fishing, 191. 
Flies, 75. 

Flower Catalogue, A, 66. 
Forbearance, 86. 
French Art, 93. 
Fun, 48. 

General Averages, 35. 
Genius, 62. 
Gentlemanliuess, 76. 
Gentleness, 67. 
Genuine Goodness, 54. 
Getting Rich, 58. 
Giving, 43, 75. 
Good-heartedness, 102. 



Good-nature, 1. 

Good of Disorder, The, 

175. 
Good Resolutions, 47. 
Going to School, 150. 
Gospel-teaching, 116. 
Grave, The, 40. 
Gi"eat Sermons, 74. 
Growth, 75. 

Harsh Judgment, 2. 
Hating, 92. 
Hay-riding, 33. 
Heaped-up Money, 84. 
Hearing and Speaking, 86. 
Heart Culture, 104. 
Heathen, 34. 
Heathen Chinese, 50. 
Heaven, 76. 
Hidden Devil, A, 68. 
Hobby-horses, 99. 
Home Rule, 83. 
Homes and Heresy, 93. 
Honesty, 83. 

in Prayer, 26. 
Hope, 46. 
Hopes, 70. 
Householders, 29. . 



210 



INDEX. 



Housekeeping Experience, 

A, 167. 
How Not to Eat, 58. 
to Eat, 58. 

to Know Christians, 
91. 
How to Manage a Congre- 
gation, 28. 
How to Manage a Crowd, 

27. 
How to Manage Prayer- 
meetings, 48. 
How to Write, 25. 
Human Dogs, 71. 
Life, 85. 
Nature, 82. 
Humor, 2. 
Humors, 80. 
Hunger, 96. 
Hypocrisy, 56. 

Idealism and Realism, 109. 
Idleness, 70. 
Impostors, 90. 
Impressionability, 107. 
Individuality, 55. 
Influence, 57. 
Insects, 51. 



Inspiration, 91. 
International Sympathy, 78. 
Introspection, 98. 
Irishmen, 53. 

Jollity, 26. 

Joy in Religion, 108. 

Kissing, 44. 
Knowledge, 70. 

Lambs and Wolves, 58. 
Land and Cultivation, 105. 
Laughter, 1, 73. 
Lettuce and Oaks, 98. 
Lily-handed Boys, 102. 
Lord's Day, The, 19. 
Lord's Garment, The, 94. 
Lovers, 21. 
Low Ideals, 54, 76. 
Luxury, 43. 

Manhood, 8. 
Manners, 122. 
Mechanical Prayer, 88. 

Singing, 42. 
Meditation, 108. 
Meekness, 112. 



INDEX. 



211 



Mid-October Days, 157. 
Millionnaires, 25. 
Mistaken Vanity, 20. 
Mistakes, 20. 
Mirthfulness, vii. 
Modern Conveniences, 161. 
Modest Merit, 69. 
Money and Powder, 85. 
Heaped up, 84. 
Moping, 42. 
Morality, 39. 
Mosquitoes, 39, 140. 
Moths, 41. 

Motive of Fear, The, 100. 
Music and Morals, 52. 

Naming Flowers, 23. 
Negative Religion, 46, 108. 
Nests, 92. 
New-comers, 61. 
New-England Sunday, 135. 
Newspaper Infidels, 32. 
Newton's Apple, 32. 
Nutting : Its Joys and Dis- 
asters, 154. 

Old INIan's Journey, The, 
193. 



Omnipotence, 80. 
One-bladed Men, 98. 
Original Sin, 35. 
Origin and Destiny, 110. 
Owls and Eagles, 73. 
Owning Up, 79. 
Oysters, 40. 

Parson's Horse, The, 126. 
Peace and Fighting, 78. 
Perfectionism, 22. 
Perfumery, 133. 
Personal Gifts, 47. 
Philosophers, 90. 
Philosophy in Love, 100. 
Plain Preaching, 81. 

Talking, 67. 
Poor Man's Luxury, 46. 
Poor Tunes, 99. 
Pope Pius IX., 32. 
Portrait of an Angel, 38. 
Praising, 69. 
Pranks, 187. 
Prayer and Work, 74. 

Answers to, 65, 80. 

Laziness in, 45. 
Preachers, 67. 
Preaching, 81. 



212 



INDEX. 



Premature Saintship, 51. 
Pride and Destruction, 106. 
Priesthood, 82. 
Providence, 47. 
Pumpkin in Architecture, 
*22. 
Puzzler, A, 33. 

Quizzing, 72. 

Radiant Humor, 73. 
Raw Truth, 88. 
Reformers, 63. 
Relaxation, 2. 
Religion, 21, 41, 104. 
Religious Chatterers, 46. 

Sense, 23. 
Remarkable Art, 20. 
Right Truth, 98. 
Romans, Among, 107. 

Sailing, 134. 

Salvation, 61. 

Scant Virtues, 71. 

Sceptics, 75. 

School Reminiscences, 117. 

Sculpins, 103. 

Sects, 51, 95. 



Self-deception, 57. 

Self-denial, 56. 

Selfish Kindness, 102. 

Selfishness, 3. 

Sense, 41. 

Sense of Humor, 114. 

Sentiment in Religion, 109. 

Sermon-making, 42. 

Shallowness, 89. 

Shiftlessness, 60. 

Shut Your Mouth, 95. 

Silence, 86. 

Singing Birds, 56. 

Singing in Heaven, 52. 

Slander, 111. 

Slavery, 27. 

Sleep, 45. 

Sleeping on the Cai's, 151. 

Smoke, 40. 

Sobersides, 1. 

Sobriety, 3. 

Soggy Goodness, 50. 

Soul Happiness, 107. 

Sounds and Noise, 68. 

Special Temptations, 105. 

Speech in Liverpool, 27. 

Spencer, Herbert, 54. 

Spiritual Oddities, 91. 



INDEX. 



213 



Spontaneity, 42. 
Stinginess, 83. 
Stone Walls, 32. 
Studying Man, The, 101. 
Studying People, 74. 
Stupid Religionists, 128. 
Success, 81. 
Sudden Death, 103. 
Superiority of Good Nature, 

28. 
Swearing, 31. 

Silent, 97. 
Slow, 38. 
Sweetness of Money-getting, 

47. 
Sweet Saintship, 105. 

Taking Thought, 62. 
Tastefulness, 86. 
Tax-paying, 99. 
Telescopes, 97. 
Temptation, 104. 
Theologic Gods, 53. 
Theology, 73. 

and the Bible, 115. 
Thievery, 29. 



Thinking and Working, 

109. 
Thought and Experience, 

116. 
Thought-a-Type, The, 182. 
Tongue-piercing, 90. 
Training, 76. 

Unconscious Christians, 79. 
Unostentation, 94. 
Used Life, 89. 

Ventilation, 78. 
Virtue, 57. 
Vitality, 45. 

War, 27. 

Wasps, 137. 

Well-timed Watching, 104. 

Western Trip, A, 143. 

Whipping, 20. 

Women's Speaking, 48. 

Yankees, 71. 
Young Folks, 64. 
Young Saints, 88. 



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